The Project Gutenberg EBook of Emblems Of Love, by Lascelles Abercrombie This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Emblems Of Love Author: Lascelles Abercrombie Release Date: March 26, 2005 [EBook #15472] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EMBLEMS OF LOVE *** Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, S.R. Ellison and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team. EMBLEMS OF LOVE BY THE SAME AUTHOR INTERLUDES AND POEMS EMBLEMS OF LOVE DESIGNED IN SEVERAL DISCOURSES BY LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE _"Wonder it is to see in diverse mindes How diversly love doth his pageaunts play" "Ego tamquam centrum, circuli, cui simili modo se habent circumferentiæ partes"_ TO MY WIFE TABLE page HYMN TO LOVE 3 PART I DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY PRELUDE 7 VASHTI 16 PART II IMPERFECTION THREE GIRLS IN LOVE: MARY: A LEGEND OF THE '45 77 JEAN 94 KATRINA 109 PART III VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION JUDITH 127 THE ETERNAL WEDDING 188 MARRIAGE SONG 200 EPILOGUE: DEDICATION 209 EMBLEMS OF LOVE HYMN TO LOVE We are thine, O Love, being in thee and made of thee, As thóu, Lóve, were the déep thóught And we the speech of the thought; yea, spoken are we, Thy fires of thought out-spoken: But burn'd not through us thy imagining Like fiérce móod in a sóng cáught, We were as clamour'd words a fool may fling, Loose words, of meaning broken. For what more like the brainless speech of a fool,-- The lives travelling dark fears, And as a boy throws pebbles in a pool Thrown down abysmal places? Hazardous are the stars, yet is our birth And our journeying time theirs; As words of air, life makes of starry earth Sweet soul-delighted faces; As voices are we in the worldly wind; The great wind of the world's fate Is turned, as air to a shapen sound, to mind And marvellous desires. But not in the world as voices storm-shatter'd, Not borne down by the wind's weight; The rushing time rings with our splendid word Like darkness filled with fires. For Love doth use us for a sound of song, And Love's meaning our life wields, Making our souls like syllables to throng His tunes of exultation. Down the blind speed of a fatal world we fly, As rain blown along earth's fields; Yet are we god-desiring liturgy, Sung joys of adoration; Yea, made of chance and all a labouring strife, We go charged with a strong flame; For as a language Love hath seized on life His burning heart to story. Yea, Love, we are thine, the liturgy of thee. Thy thought's golden and glad name, The mortal conscience of immortal glee, Love's zeal in Love's own glory. PART I DISCOVERY AND PROPHECY PRELUDE _Night on bleak downs; a high grass-grown trench runs athwart the slope. The earthwork is manned by warriors clad in hides. Two warriors, BRYS and GAST, talking_. _Gast_. This puts a tall heart in me, and a tune Of great glad blood flowing brave in my flesh, To see thee, after all these moons, returned, My Brys. If there's no rust in thy shoulder-joints, That battle-wrath of thine, and thy good throwing, Will be more help for us than if the dyke Were higher by a span.--Ha! there was howling Down in the thicket; they come soon, for sure. _Brys_. Has there been hunger in the forest long? _Gast_. I think, not only hunger makes them fierce: They broke not long since into a village yonder, A huge throng of them; all through the night we heard The feasting they kept up. And that has made The wolves blood-thirsty, I believe. _Brys_. O fools To keep so slack a waking on their dykes! Now have they made a sleepless winter for us. Every night we must look, lest the down-slope Between us and the woods turn suddenly To a grey onrush full of small green candles, The charging pack with eyes flaming for flesh. And well for us then if there's no more mist Than the white panting of the wolfish hunger. _Gast_. They'll come to-night. Three of us hunting went Among the trees below: not long we stayed. All the wolves of the world are in the forest, And man's the meat they're after. _Brys_. Ay, it must be Blood-thirst is in them, if they come to-night, Such clear and starry weather.--What dost thou make, Gast, of the stars? _Gast_. Brother, they're horrible. I always keep my head as much as I may Bent so they cannot look me in the eyes. _Brys_. I never had this awe. The fear I have Is not a load I crouch beneath, but something Proud and wonderful, that lifteth my heart. Yea, I look on a night of stars with fear That comes close against glee. 'Tis like the fear I have for the wolves, that maketh me joy-mad To drive the yellow flint-edge through their shags. So when I gaze on stars, they speak high fear Into my soul; and strangely I think they mean The fear must prompt me to some unknown war. _Gast_. Be thou well ware of this. I have not told thee How the stars, with their perilous overlooking, Have raught away from all his manhood Gwat, Our fiercest strength. For when the conquering wolves Into that village won, we in our huts Lay hearkening to their rejoicing hunger; But Gwat stayed out in the stars all night long. I peered at him as much as that whipt dog, My heart, had daring for; and he stood stiff, With all his senses aiming at the noise. Some strong bad eagerness kept tightly rigged The cordage of his body, till his nerves Loosed on a sudden. He yelled, "What do we here, High up among bleak winds, always afraid Of murder from the wolves? I will be man No more; the grey four-footed fellows have The good meats of the world, and the best lodging, Forest and weald." And then he wolfish howled, And hurled off towards the snarling and the baying. And now his soul wears the strength and fury Of a huge dun-pelted wolf; he's the wolves' king; And the fiends have learnt from him to laugh at our flints. Now always in the assaults there's one great beast, With yellow eyes and hackles like a mane, That plays the captain, first to reach the dyke; And I have heard that when he stands upright To ramp against the bulwarks, in his throat Are chattering yelps half tongued to grisly words. Doubtless to-night thou'lt see him, leading his pack, And with his jaws savagely tampering With our earth-builded safety.--But now, Brys, Is it not certain that the stars have done This evil to Gwat's heart, and curdled all The manhood in him? _Brys_. When I was wanderer, I came upon a lake, set in a land Which has no fear of wolves. A fisher folk Live there in houses stilted over the water, And the stars walk like spectres of white fire Upon the misty waters of the mere. Ay, if they have no wolves, they have the fear All as thou hast; the sedges in the night Shudder, and out of the reeds there comes a cry Half chuckling, half bewailing; but, as I think, It is the mallard calling. Now among This haunted folk, I markt a man who went With shining eyes, and a joy in his face, about His needs of living. Clear it was to me He knew of some sweet race in his daily wont Which blest him wonderly. I lived with him, And from him learnt marvels. Yea, for he gave me A wit to see in our earth more than fear. Brother, how shall I tell thee, who hast still Fear-poisoned nerves, that like a priest he brewed My heart keen drink from out the look of earth?-- Gast, is it nothing to thee that all in green The wolds go heaping up against the blue? And is it only fear to thee that night Is thatched with stars?--Ah, but I took his wit Further than he e'er did; in women I found The same amazement for my wakened eyes As in the hills and waters. Ay, gape at me, And think me bitten by some evil tooth; But as a quiet stream at the cliff's edge Breaks its smooth habit into a loud white force, So this delight the earth pours over me Leaps out of women with such excellence, It seems as I must brace my sinews to it,-- The comely fashion of their limbs, their eyes, Their gait, and the way they use their arms. And now My eyes have a message to my heart from them Such as thou only through a blind skin hast. Therefore I came back here;--I scarce know why, But now that women are to me not only The sacred friends of hidden Awe, not only Mistresses of the world's unseen foison, Ay, and not only ease for throbbing groins, But things mine eyes enjoy as mine ears take songs, Vision that beats a timbrel in my blood, Dreams for my sleeping sight, that move aired round With wonder, as trembling covers a hearth,-- It seems I must be fighting for them, must Run through some danger to them now before Delighting in them. I am here to fight Wolves for the joy of the world, marvellous women! _Gast_. Star-madden'd! What is this in earth and women That pricks thee into wrath against the wolves? Do I not fight for women too? But I For what is certain in them, not for madness. _Brys_. I make my fierceness of a mind to set My spirit high up in the winds of joy, Before I tumble down into the darkness. Not thus thy women send thee to thy fighting: All fear thy battle-courage is, fear-bred Thine anger. Thou heavily drudgest women, But yet thou art afraid of them. _Gast_. Ay, truly; For look how from their wondrous bodies comes Increase: who knoweth where such power ends? They are in league with the great Motherhood Who brings the seasons forth in the open world; And if to them She hands, unseen by us, Their marvellous bringing forth of children, what Spirit of Her great dreadful mountain-spell, Wherein the rocks have purpose against us, Sealed up in watchful quiet stone, may not Pass on to their dark minds, that seem so mild, Yet are so strange; or what charm'd word from out Her forests whispering endless dangerous things, Wherefrom our hunters often have run crazed To hear the trees devising for their souls; What secret share of Her earth's monstrous power May She not also grant to women's lives? Yea, wise is our fear of women; but we fight For more than fear; we give them liking too. Who but the women can deliver us From this continual siege of the wolves' hunger? High above comfort, on the shrugging backs Of downland, where the winds parch our skins, and frost Kneads through our flesh until his fingers clamp The aching bones, our scanty families Hold out against the ravin of the wolves, Fended by earthwork, fighting them with flint. But if we keep the favour of our women, They will breed sons to us so many and strong We shall have numbers that will make us dare Invade the weather-shelter'd woods, and build Villages where now only wolves are denn'd; Yea, to the beasts shall the man-folk become Malice that haunts their ways, even as now Our leaguer'd tribes must lurk and crouch afraid Of wolfish malice always baying near. And fires, stackt hugely high with timber, shall With nightlong blaze make friendly the dark and cold, Cheer our bodies, and roast great feasts of flesh,-- Ah, to burn trunks of trees, not bracken and ling! This is what women are to me,--a fear Lest the earth-hidden Awe, who unseen gives The childing to their flesh, should make their minds As darkly able as their wombs, with power To think sorceries over us; and hope That with their breeding they will dispossess The beasts of the good lowlands, until man, No longer fled to the hills, inhabit all The comfort of the earth. _Brys_. These are mine too, But as great rivers own the brook's young speed. For in my soul, the women do not dwell A torch going through darkness, with a troop Of shadows gesturing after; but as the sun Upon his height of golden blaze at noon, With all the size of the blue air about him. Fear that in women the unseen is seen And the unknown power sits beside us known,-- This fear is good, but better is than this Their beauty, and the wells of joy in women. I speak dumb words to thee; but know thou, Gast, My soul is looking at the time to come, And seeing it not as a cavern lit With smoky burning brandons of thy fear, But as a day shining with my new joy. Thou canst not fight with me for the coming heart Of man,--fear cannot fight with joy. And I Am setting such a war of joy against thee, It shall be as man's heart became a god Murdering thy mind of weakling darkness. All the hot happiness of being wroth And seeing a stroke leave behind it wound, The pleasures of wily hunting, and a feast After long famine, and the dancing stored Within the must of berries,--these, and all Gladdenings that make thrill the being of man Shall pour, mixt with an unknown rage of glee, Into the meaning men shall find in women. And if we have at all a fear of them, It shall not be the old ignorant dismay, But of their very potency to delight, The way their looks make Will an enemy Hating itself, shall men become afraid. Women shall cause men know for why they have Being in the earth;--not to be quailing slack As if the whole world were a threat, but tuned Ready for joy as harp-strings for the player. And great desire of beauty and to be glad Shall prompt our courages. Ha, what are those Breaking from out the thickets? _Gast_. Wolves! They come! Brothers, the fiends are on us: have good hearts! Ho for the women and their sacred wombs! _Brys_. Ho for the women, their beauty and my pleasure! VASHTI I AHASUERUS AND VASHTI _Vashti_. My lord requires me here. _Ahasuerus_. Does Heaven see this? Dare I have this one humble unto me? Was it not enough, Stars, to have given me This marriage? but you must persuade your God To have me as well the greatest king beneath you! Look you now if men grow not insolent Because of me, a man so throned, so wived. Yea, and in me insolent groweth my love; For if the wheels of the careering world Brake, felley and spoke, that, pitching on the road, It spilt the driving godhead from his seat, And the unreined team of hours riskily dragg'd Their crippled duty,--if in that lurching world Like jarred glass my power shattered about me, And I were a head unking'd, 'twere but a game, So I were left possessing thee, and that Escape from Heaven, the beauty that goes with thee. Here is an insolence! Hast thou not wonder'd, Vashti, what gave thee into such a love, That in the brain of me, the chosen king, It is so loud, so insolent, thy love? O this shrill sweet heart-mastering love! _Vashti_. Alas, Do I deserve that love?--But yes, I wonder; For what am I that the king loveth me? Lo, I am woman, thou art man, the lord; Out of mere bounty are we loved of you, And not for our deserving. We are to sit In a high calm, and not go down and help Among the toil, and choosing, chosen, find Companionship therein. For thou, for man Has such a treasure in his heart of love, It must be squandered out in charity, Not used as a gentle money to repay Worth (as a woman spends her love). A trick Of posture in a girl, and see the alms Of generous love man will enrich her with! Might there not be sometimes too much of alms About his love? But we will blink at that. Yet sometimes we are liked ashamed, to be Taking so much love from you, all for naught. Now therefore tell me, Man, my king, my master: Lovest thou me, or dost thou rather love The pleasure thou hast in me? This is not nice, Believe me. They're more sundered, these two loves, Than if all the braving seas marcht between them. _Ahasuerus_. What, shrinking from thine own delightsomeness? Hear then. Nature, so ordered from the God, Has given strength to man and work to do, But to woman gave that she should be delight For man, else like an overdriven ox Heart-broke. The world was made for man, but made Wisely a steep difficulty to be climbed, That he, so labouring the stubborn slant, May step from off the world with a well-used courage, All slouch disgrace fought out of him, a man Well worthy of a Heaven. And this great part Has woman in the work; that man, fordone And wearied, may find lodging out of the noise Upon her breast, and looking in her eyes May wash in pools of kindness, fresh as Heaven, The soil of sweat and trouble from his limbs; And turning aside into this pleasant inn Called woman, there is entertainment kept For man, such that for cheating craftily The stabled palter'd heart that it can pass Through the world's grillage and be large as fate, The sweet anxiety of reeded pipes Is a mere thing to it. Like Heaven street When the steel of God's army surges through it, Bright anger burning on an errand of swords, So is the sense of man when woman-joy Pours through his flesh a throng of deity, White clamorous flame; yea, desire of woman Maketh the mind of more room for amazement Than that blue loft hath for the light, more charged With spiritual joy that goes in stress As far as tears, with this more throbbingly charged Than the starr'd night wept full of silver fires,-- Dangerously endured, labours of joy! Is it not virtuous, not powerful, this? Wouldst thou have more? Man knows he can possess Than woman's beauty nought more treasurable. And high above our loud activities We keep, pure as the dawn, the house of love, Woman, wherein we entering leave outside Our rank sweat-drenchèd weeds of toil, and there Enjoy ourselves, out of the world, awhile. _Vashti (aside)_. O yes, I know. Filthiness! Filthiness! _Ahasuerus_. Now here have I been toiling under press Of glory. Should I not stumble in my gait, Were there no Vashti, and with her a welcome I do not need to buy, since all she wants Is that I love her? Going in unto her I may unstrap my burdenous pack of kingship, Shift me of reign, and escape my splendour. Yea, and strange largeness in this power of love For men too much limited! Now I am sick Of knowing my greatness, now I want to be Placed where my soul can feel vast room about me, To be contained. Outside, among the men, I am the room of the world; I and my rule Contain the world; and I am sick thereof. Vashti can remedy this; for here thy beauty More spacious is for my senses to be in, Than his own golden kingdom for the sun. _Vashti_. Thine eyes are glad with me? I please the King? _Ahasuerus_. Eyes? But there is no nerve thou takest not, No way of my life thronging not with thee, And my blood sounds at the story of thy beauty. What thing shall be held up to woman's beauty? Where are the bounds of it? Yea, what is all The world, but an awning scaffolded amid The waste perilous Eternity, to lodge This Heaven-wander'd princess, woman's beauty? The East and West kneel down to thee, the North And South, and all for thee their shoulders bear The load of fourfold place. As yellow morn Runs on the slippery waves of the spread sea, Thy feet are on the griefs and joys of men That sheen to be thy causey. Out of tears, Indeed, and blitheness, murder and lust and love, Whatever has been passionate in clay, Thy flesh was tempered. Behold in thy body The yearnings of all men measured and told, Insatiate endless agonies of desire Given thy flesh, the meaning of thy shape! What beauty is there, but thou makest it? How is earth good to look on, woods and fields The seasons' garden, and the courageous hills, All this green raft of earth moored in the seas? The manner of the sun to ride the air, The stars God has imagined for the night? What's this behind them, that we cannot near, Secret still on the point of being blabbed, The ghost in the world that flies from being named? Where do they get their beauty from, all these? They do but glaze a lantern lit for man, And woman's beauty is the flame therein Feeding on sacred oil, man's desire, A golden flame possessing all the earth. Or as a queen upon an embassage From out some mountain-guarded far renown, Brings caravans stockt from her slavish mines, Her looms and forges, with a precious friendship; So comest thou from the chambers of the stars On thy famed visit unto man the king; So bringing from the mints and shops of Heaven, Where thou didst own labours of all the fates, A shining traffic, all that man calls beauty: There is no holding out for the heart of man Against thee and such custom. O hard to be borne, Often hard to be borne is woman's beauty!-- And well I guess it does but cover up Enmity, hanging falseness between our souls, And buy at a dishonest price the mouth True nature hath for thee, to speak thee fair. Were not man's thought so gilded with thy beauty, Woman, and caught in the desire of thee, O, there'ld be hatred in his use of thee. You should be thankful for your pleasantness! _Vashti_. Yes, I am thankful. For I hope, my lord, We women know our style. Ay, we are fooled Sometimes with heady tampering thoughts, that come To bother our submission, I confess. We to ourselves have said, that when God took The fierce beginning of the unwrought world From out his fiery passion, and, breathing cool, Tamed the wild molten being, with his hands Fashion'd and workt the hot clay into world, Then with green mercy quieted the land And claspt it with the summer of blue seas, With brooches of white spray along the shores,-- It was to be an equal dwelling-place For humans that he did it, into sex Unknowably dividing human kind. But wickedly we say this. God made man For his delight and praise, and then made woman For man's delight and praise, submiss to man. Else wherefore sex? And it is better thus, To be man's pleasure. What noble work is ours, To have our bodies proper for your love, The means of your delight! Ay, and minds too, Sometimes; we think, we women think we know What shape of mind pleases our masters best, And that we build up in us. A tender shyness, A coy reluctancy,--we use these well. Man is our master; it is best for us Persuading him line our captivity With wool-soft love, lest it be bitter iron. _Ahasuerus_. This is the marvel's head, that thou, so fair, And loved by me, should keep so good a mind. --They shall not see thee, when I display at large The riches and the honour; I've enough Possession, without thee, to stupify The assembly of my men, my herd of kings. I mean there shall not be a hint of doubt About whose world this is. So I have bid, From all the utter regions of my land, The kings whom I allow to rule, who breathe My air, to feast with me and for a while Flatter their trivial lives with a brief relish Of being king of the world's kings in Shushan. Yea, and I will dismay their wits with splendour; No noise shall be against me in the world. I am more open, kinder than Lord God, Who never shows how much he has of thunder; Wherefore against him men presume, and go Often out of his ways extravagant. But all the fear I keep obedient by me Now to the gather'd world I openly shew. So God is spoken against, I am never, And I have a better terror in the world; And chiefly for the happiness built round me Divinely firm. O all the kings, my men, Shall fear this terrible happiness of mine! But thee I will not shew; I'll have some wealth Not public. I'll have no adulteries, No eyes but mine enjoying thee. To me The sight of thee, all as the touch of thee, Belongeth, only my pleasure thou art: None but my senses shall come unto thee, And I will keep my pleasure pure as Heaven. Happy art thou, Vashti, to have wedded One who so dearly rates possession of thee. Better it is to spend my heart on thee Than on any of the women that I have. II THE FEAST OF KINGS: MIDNIGHT _Ahasuerus_. You kings, you thrones that burn about the world, Whom yet I king, lifted higher above you Than you are lifted up above your folks: This is my day. I have agreed with Heaven, My fellow in the fear of the world, to have This day unshar'd; and it is all mine, All that the Gods from baseless fires and steams Have harden'd into the place and kind of the world: The great high quiet journey of the stars, And all the golden hours which the sun Utters aloft in heaven;--the whole is mine To fill with ceremonies of my throne. This one day, I am where Heaven and I Commonly stand together; you shall not have Shelter from me in a worshipt God to-day, Kings; look yonder at many-power'd night, Telling her beauty to the sea and taking The prone adoring waters into her blue Desire, setting them as herself on flame With perils of joy, lending them her achieved Raptures, her white experiences of stars. So shall your souls lie under me these hours; As they were waters shall they be beneath My burning, set alight with me, and none Escape from utterly understanding me And why I am so kindled in my soul. Who has been like to me? My name travels A hundred seven and twenty languages, My name a ship upon them, trading fear. My unseen power weighs upon the heads Of nations, like the blown abasement given By sedges when they are wretched to the wind. Ay, and the farthest goings of the air Can reach no land my taxes do not labour. The fear of me is the conscience of the world. Ahasuerus is a region large As there is light upon the earth; when dawn With golden duties celebrates the sun, It does but serve to fetch the lives I own Out of shadow flinching into the light,-- Out of sleep's mercy the sore lives that know Only a penal sun, that are so chapt In winds of my sent spirit: I care not, I. For as my flesh out of my father's joy Came, fraught from him with hunger for like joy,-- As, when roused ages of desire within me Play with my blood as storms play with the sea, And all my senses tug one way like sails, My flesh obeys, and into that perilous dream, Woman, exults;--so, but much more, my soul, That had its faculties from far beyond The tingling loam of flesh, obeys a need: Conquest, and nations to enjoy with war. For 'tis a need that rode down out of God Upon my journeying soul into this world's Affairs, like smouldering fire besiegers throw Among a city's roofs, which cannot choose But take blaze from the whole town's timber; so My soul's desire for flame hath charred the world. Till now, as the night full of perfect fires, I, full of conquests, am large over you. And you must be like waters underneath me, Full of my burning; there's no more for me Now, but to dwell alone in my still soul's Hoarding of ecstasies, a great place of lusts Achieved and shining fixt; for every man Is mine, and every soil is mine, from here Round to the furthest cliffs that steadfast are To keep the hoofs of the sea from murdering The tilled leagues of the land. And by the coasts I am not kept. Far into the room of waters, Into the blue middle of ocean's summer, The white gait of my sea-going war invades. I have a man here, one who makes with words, And he shall be my messenger to your hearts. Not to make much of me; but he's the speech Of Spirit,--I the dangerous exultation, The Spirit's sacred joy in wrath against The heaps of its own spent kinds, melting anew To found in another image of itself. He is the man to shew you, withinside The flashing and exclaim of my great moving About the places of the world; within The heat of my pleasure that has molten down, Like ingots in a furnace, all your nations Into my likeness treading on the earth; Within the smokes that make your eyes pour grief, This gleam of infinite purpose quietly nested,-- That I am given the world, and that my pleasure Is plain the latest word spoken by God. So while our senses go among these wines, Wander in green deliciousness and crimson, And fragrance searches the else-unsearchable brain, Poet, tell out the glory of the king. _The Poet_. The glory of the king of all the kings.-- You with the golden power on your brows, You kings, I think you know not what you are. First you shall learn yourselves: for neither light Understandeth itself, nor darkness light. You see your glory; but you cannot see That which your glory conquers; and the peoples Know nought but that the glooming of their night Maketh a shining scope for crowns, as he, Even as he, your king, Ahasuerus, Maketh your splendour a darkness for his light. But I, neither belonging to the kings Nor to the people, only I may know The golden fortune of light anointing kings. Come with me now, and take my vision awhile. The people of this world are misery. What doth Man here? How thinketh God on him? Surely he was sent here as if thereby God might forget him. Like infamous desire A wise heart puts aside, which yet remains A secret hated memory, man was In God, and is vainly discarded here. I see him coming here; I see man's life Falling into this base and desert ground, This world that seems an evil riddance thrown Down by the winds of God's swift purposes; Some shame of grossness, that would cling upon The errand of their holy speed, and here Heapt up and strewn into the place wherein The mind and being of man wander darkly. Behold him coming here!--Against my sight, Warning aback the gleam of sacred heaven, Is vast forbiddance raised; creatures like hills, Or darkness surging at the coasts of light, Stand, a great barricade behind our lives, Rankt as Eternity had put on stature. The sharp sides of the peaks are finger'd white With flame, lit by the fires of God beyond; The rest is night; the whole people of dark hills A front of high impenetrable doom. But lo! Black in the blackness, is a yawn in the doom, And out of it flows the kind of man. Behold, It is a river, through the permission sent As through a snarling breakage in a cliff; Turned like a hated thing away from God; Spat out, the water of man's life, to spill Down bleak gullies, and thrid the gangways dark Through the reluctant hills, pouring as if It knew God were ashamed of it. And thence, Rejected down the abhorring steeps, man's life Is wasted in this country, set to run A blind, ignorant, unremembered course, Treading with hopeless feet of griev'd waters Unending unblest spaces, the shameful road Of dirt thickening into slime its flow, An insane weather driving. For at the issue, Hovering mightily fledge to beat it on, A climate of demon's wings o'erarches man, The hatred God has sent pursuing him. Fierce hawking spirits wrong him, hungry Cold, Crazes of Fear and sickening Want, and huge Injurious Darkness, lord of the bad wings That pester all the places beyond God,-- These at the door, with lust to embody themselves, Wait for the naked journey of man's life To seize it into ache, ravenously. They never leave, down all its patient way, To meddle with its waters, till they be sour As venom, salt as weeping, foully ailing With foreign evil,--all the sort of desires Whoring the shuddering life unto their lust. Behold man's river now; it has travelled far From that divine loathing, and it is made One with the two main fiends, the Dark and Cold, The faithful lovers of mankind. Behold, Broad it is now become, a plenteous water, A roomy tide. And lo, what oars are these? To sweet sung measure rows what happy fleet, With at the lifted prows banners of flame, Bravely scaring the darkness to betray The black embarasst flood sheared by the stems? Behold, at last God for man's misery Hath found excuse! Behold his wretchedness Gilded at last with beauty pleasant to God! No longer a useless grief is man's life now; For floating on it, for enjoying it, A state of barges goes, the state of kings. They bring a day with them of many lamps, And as they move, on the black slabbèd waters Red wounds, and green, and golden, do they shoot About them, beautiful cruelty of light; And they throw music over the sounding river. I too am walking on the sea of man; I watch your singing and your lamps row past; And under me I hear the river speaking, The great blind water moaning to itself For sorrow it was made. But in your blithe ships Silverly chained with luxury of tune Your senses lie, in a delicious gaol Of harmony, hours of string'd enchantment. Or if you wake your ears for the river's voice, You hear the chime of fawning lipping water, Trodden to chattering falsehood by the keels Of kings' happiness. And what is it to you, When strangely shudders the fabric of your navy To feel the thrilling tide beneath it grieving; Or when its timber drinks the river's mood, The mighty mood of man's Despair, which runs Like subtle electric blood through all the hulls, And tips each masthead with a glimmering candle Blue pale and flickering like a ghost? For you Are too much lit to mark a corposant. Nor yours the stale smell of the unhealthful stream, Clotted with mud and sullen with its weeds, Who carry your own air with you, blest sweet And drencht with many scattered fragrances. You, sailing in golden ignorance, know not The anxious flow of life under your way: Do you not miss half the wonder of you?-- That so your happiness in the thought of God Stands, that he open'd man's expense of grief To give your oars unscrupulous room, to be The buoyancy of your delighted barges, Sliding with fortunate lanterns and with tunes And odorous holiday, O kings, O you The pleasure of God, richly, joyously launcht On this kind sea, the tame sorrow of Man? You need poets to reckon your marvellousness---- _Ahasuerus_. Where is he driving? I set thee not to this; It was to tell what I, not what they, be. _Poet_. How can they know what thou art, if not first I tell them what they are themselves, my king? _Ahasuerus_. Thou hast a night, man, not a week to tell them. You men of words, dealers in breath, conceit Too bravely of yourselves;--O I know why You love to make man's life a villainous thing, And pose his happiness with heavy words. You mean to puff your craft into a likeness Of what hath been in the great days of the Gods. When Tiamat, the old foul worm from hell, Lay coiled and nested in the unmade world, All the loose stuff dragg'd with her rummaging tail And packt about her belly in a form, Where she could hutch herself and bark at Heaven,-- The god's bright soldier, Bel, fashioned a wind; And when her jaws began her whining rage Against him, into her guts he shot the wind And rent the membranes of her life. So you Wordmongers would be Bel to the life of man. You like not that his will should heap the world About him in a fumbled den of toil; And set the strength of his spirit, not to joy, But to laborious money; so you stand forth And think with spoken wind to make such stir And rumble in the inwards of man's life, That he in a noble colic will leap up Out of his cave of work and breathe sweet air. You will not do it: man prefers his den. Now leave mankind alone and sing of me. _Poet_. So; I will tell thy glory now aright. I will not make it thy chief wonder, King, That thou hast tied the world upon a rack; Or that thy armies be so huge, the earth Sways like a bridge of planks beneath their march, And leagues about their way out of the ground Like thunder comes the rumour of thy vengeance. These be but shows of kingship; but one thing Exclaims, inevitably as a word Announced by God, thee first of the world's souls,-- That thou mayst have in thy arms Vashti the Queen.-- Princes, what looks are these? Why are your minds astonisht so unwisely? What, think you war the thing, or pompous fame? See if I speak not truth of love and woman. You will have heard how lightning's struck a man, Shepherd or wayfarer, and when they found The branded corpse, the rayment was torn off, Blown into tatters and strewn wide by that Withering death, and he birth-naked stretcht: Bethink you, is not that now very like How woman smites your souls? Whatever dress Of thought you take to royalize your nature,-- Gorgeous shawls of kingship, a world's fear, Or ample weavings of imagination, Or the spun light of wisdom,--like a gust Of flame, that weather of impersonal thought You strut beneath, that hanging storm of Love, Strikes down a terrible swift dazzling finger, Sight of some woman, on your clothèd hearts, And plucks the winding folly off, and leaves Bare nature there. And hear another likeness. Look, if the priests have made an altar-fire, They can have any flame they list, as gums Sprinkle the fluel, or salts, or curious earths,-- Tawny or purple, green, scarlet, or blue, Or moted with an upward rain of sparks; But first there must be air, or else no fire: Man's being is a fire lit unto God, And many thoughts colour the sacred flame; But the air for him, the draught wherein he glows, The breathing spirit that has turned mere life Into the hot vehement being of man Lambent upon the altar of the world, Is woman and desire of her, nought else. Behold, we know not what we do at all When we love women: is it we who love, Or Destiny rather visiting our souls In passion?--How shall I name thee what thou art, Woman, thou dream of man's desire that God Caught out of man's first sleep and fashioned real? Deliverance art thou from his own strait thought, Wind come from beyond the stars To blow away like mist all the disgrace Of reasonable bars, The forgery of time and place, Whereinto soul was narrowly brought When it was gridded close behind The workings of man's mind. But Woman comes to bless With an immoderateness, With a divine excess, Lust of life and yearn of flesh, Till there seems naught hindering our souls: Else we should crawl along the years Labour'd with measurable joys No greater than our life, Things carefully devised against tears; And as snails harden their sweat To brittle safety, a carried shell, So we might build out of our woe of toil Serious delight. But to see and hear and touch Woman Breaks our shell of this accursed world, And turns our measured days to measureless gleam. Up in a sudden burning flares The dark tent of nature pitched about our souls; And light, like a stound of golden din, A shadowless light like weather of infinite plains, Light not narrowed into place, Amazes the naked nerves of the soul; And like the pouring of immortal airs Out of a flowery season, Over us blows the inordinate desire.-- Ah, who from Hell did the wisdom bring That would make life a formal thing? Who has invented all the manner and wont, The customary ways, That harness into evil scales Of malady our living? But how they shrivel and craze If love but glance on them! And as a bowl of glass to shattering Shivers at a sounding string, The brittle glittering self of man At beauty of Woman throbs apieces, And seems into Eternity spilled The being it contained. Let it touch Woman and flesh becomes Finer and more thrilled Than air contrived in tune, Lighter round the soul Than flame is round burning. She is God's bribery to man That he the world endure, His wage for carrying the weight of being. Nay, she is rather the eternal lure Out of form and things that end, Out of all the starry snares, Out of the trap of years, Into measureless desire; Lest man be satisfied with mind,-- Be never stung into self-hate At crouching always in the crate Of prudent knowledge round him wrought, And so grow small as his own thought. Kings, think of the woman's body you love best How the beloved lines twin and merge, Go into rhyme and differ, swerve and kiss, Relent to hollows or like yearning pout,-- Curves that come to wondrous doubt Or smooth into simplicities; Like a skill of married tunes Curdled out of the air; How it is all sung delivering magic To your pent hamper'd souls! I tell you, kings, yours are but stammer'd songs To that enchantment fashion'd for him, That ceremony of life's powers, The loveliness of Vashti; That unbelievable worship made For King Ahasuerus. He to whom the loveliest she is given, Least is bound to ended things, Belongeth most on earth to Heaven; Hath the whitest wind of flame To burn his soul clean of the world, Clean of mortal imaginings, And back to the Beauty whence he came. Now you hear the glory of the king of kings, That he knows Vashti, that he lives In this pleasure always. Ah, could you see her! But perhaps she is Too fearful in her beauty for most men. I think she would dismay you, and unhitch The sinews from their purchase on your bones, And have you spelled as a wizard spells his ghosts. Yet 'twould be mercy so to harm your sense. The truth does not more wonderfully walk, Whose gestures are the stars, than in her ways This queen's body sways. And there is such language in her hair As the sun's self doth talk. King, let them see her! lest they return unwise Of thy true kingship, and among themselves Imagine that they are even as thou, Save in the height of throne. Let them perceive That, having Vashti, there is none like thee: Others are men; but thou art he whose spirit Is station'd in the beauty of the queen, Whose flesh knows such amazement as before Never beneath the lintels of man's sense Came, an especial messenger from Heaven. _Ahasuerus_. Bring her! let the Queen come crowned before us! Slaves, fetch here all your light to shine upon My Vashti's beauty; let there be clear floor; Make the air worthy her with camphire lit And frankincense; and fill the hall with flames. Then gaze, kings, and stare, hunger with your eyes Upon her face; but within brakes of fear Fasten your wills, and move not from your seats. Exult, you thron'd nations, that to your sight She shall be lent, the pleasure of the king, She whom to visit so inflames my soul, That I can judge how God burns to enjoy The beauty of the Wisdom that he made And separated from himself to be Wife to the divine act, mother of heavens.-- Let Vashti come and stand before the kings! III VASHTI AND THE KING'S WOMEN AT THEIR FEAST _1st Woman_. Queen, is it well to be so sorrowful? _2nd Woman_. And when the King our lord spendeth on us This festival out of his rich heart, to shoot Thy looks upon us as thou wouldst rebuke us? _Vashti_. Your pardon: do I trouble your greed? _1st Woman_. Our greed? Rather our gratitude---- _2nd Woman_. That we have share In these devices of the King's own cooks, These costly breads,-- _1st Woman_. And these delicious meats, These sauces mixt of spicy treacle and balm. _3rd Woman_. And wines, purple and blue and like gold fire, Made of the colours of the morning sea And fragrance wild as woman's need of love. _Vashti_. Enjoy them then: who lets you? _3rd Woman_. Thou dost, Queen. Thou sittest with hands folded in thy robe, And in the midst of delicacies wilt fast. _1st Woman_. We see thine eyes upon them as they were Wickedness. _2nd Woman_. 'Tis rare bounty that we women Halve with the King his festival. _3rd Woman_. And thou, It seems, scarce findest it thankworthy. _Vashti_. Again, Your pardon: but ye need not gaze on me.-- And yet, why am I sorrowful? In truth, Is it a sorrow that so leans upon me? I know not. But my soul knoweth right well That I am watched. _3rd Woman_. Then in thy conscience, Queen, Thou feelest the King requiring thanks of thee. _Vashti_. Be careful of thy tongue,--and of the wine.-- Who watches me? Eyes are fixt on my soul, Eyes of desire. I think some great event Hath pusht its spirit forward of its time, To stand here quietly waiting, into my mind Inflicting its strange want of me, and ready To fetch my heart, and ready to take my hand And lead me away shrinking: is it Death? It is some marvellous thing: for I know surely Behind it crowd out of their discipline The coming hours to watch me seized, and stare With questioning brows on me, and lift lean hands From under gowns of shadow to point me out One to another, saying: "This is she: How will she bear it, think ye?"--Is it not cold? Was there not wind just then?--The flames are steady. _1st Woman_. No wind at all: the air's like one closed room. _2nd Woman_. There is no talk like this at the King's feast, I warrant. Were we not best be merry, And thank the King so for these wines and sweets? _Vashti_. Yes, let us not forget our thankfulness; For is not, sisters, everything we have Mere gift? _2nd Woman_. My beauty pays for what I get. _Vashti_. I would, 'twere not so. _2nd Woman_. Queen, I doubt thee not. _Vashti_. Pert little fool, where lies thy beauty, then? Thou hast it not: its place is not thy flesh, But the delighting loins of men, there only. Thy beauty! And thou knowest not that man Hath forged in his furnace of desire our beauty Into that chain of law which binds our lives-- Man, please thyself, and woman, please thou man. But thou wilt have thy beauty pence, thou sayest? And what's thy purchase? Listen, I will tell thee: Just that thou art not whipt and drudged: the rest, All that thou hast beyond, is gift. _2nd Woman_. Why not? _Vashti_. Truly, for thee, why not? _2nd Woman_. Wouldst thou, 'twere yours? _1st Woman_. Thou shudderest again; what ails thee, Queen? _Vashti_. I would have lived in beauty once. _2nd Woman_. In whose? _Vashti_. I know the King finds relish in thy looks, Wench, and I have no care to grudge thy pride; But when thy face is named throughout the world For wonder, I will bear thy impudence. _1st Woman_. But tell us, Queen, thy thought; for we have made An end almost of eating; and it seems It will be somewhat strange, pleasing our mood. _Vashti_. Strange you will find it doubtless; but scarce pleasing, Unless 'tis pleasing to have news of danger. Listen! your lives are propt like a rotten house. Your souls, that should have noble lodging here, Have crept like peasants into huts that have No force within their walls, but must be shored With borrowed firmness. Yea, man's stubborn lust To feed his heart upon your beauty, is all The strength your lives have, all that holdeth you Safe in the world,--propt like a rotten house. _1st Woman_. Shall woman then not love to have man's love? _3rd Woman_. To feed his heart on us, thou sayest? O yea! And how can a woman know such might of living As when upon her breast she feels the man, The man of her desire, like sacrament Feeding his heart, yea and his soul, on her? _Vashti_. Are we for nought but so to nourish him? _3rd Woman_. Thou art too proud, O Queen, too proud and lonely, And goest apart to have thy thought too much. 'Tis known, too much thought dazes oft a mind, Till it can learn nought of the signèd evil God hath put in the faces of evil notions, That spiritual sight may ken them coming Sly and demure, and safely shut the brain Ere they be in and swell themselves to lordship. Hence is it that an evil thought in thee Hath dared so far, and played its wickedness Strangely within thee, braving even into speech. _1st Woman_. Strangely indeed thy brain's inhabited. What, is there aught prosperity for woman But to be shining in the thought of man? _Vashti_. I wisht to prosper in the life I had, That the Gods might approve the flourishing Their heavenly graft of soul took from my flesh. Therefore I wisht to love. And I did love.-- There came Ahasuerus conquering Into my father's land. My fancying hate Had made a man-beast of him, a thing, like man, Tall in his walk, but in the mood of his eyes A beast, and in the noise of his mouth a beast. He came, and lookt at me; and, in a while, I saw that he was speaking to me there. And all the maiden went in me before him, Swifter than in a moon which looks against The morning, all the silver courage fails.-- How cam'st thou to the King? _1st Woman_. Sold to him, I. _2nd Woman_. Bought by him, I: for he had heard of me. _Vashti_. I also, sold or bought; nay, rather paid: Paid like cash to him, that as servant king My father might have life, and a throne in life. It mattered nothing then. [_The_ QUEEN _pauses_. Often in early summer, as I walkt A girl singing her happiness, beside The high green corn, holding all earth my own, I saw, as my feet and my voice past by, How in its hiding some croucht little beast Startled, and filled a space of the gentle corn With plunging quivering fear. And always then My heart answer'd the fear that shook the corn, With a sudden doubt in its beating; for I knew Within my life such rousing of dismay I myself should watch, with seizing wonder. It was so: in the midst of my new love, That promist such a plenty in my soul, At last some sleeping terror leapt awake, And made the young growth shiver and wry about Inwardly tormented. Yea, and my heart It was, my heart in its hiding of green love, That took so wildly the approaching sound Of something strangely fearful walking near. _3rd Woman_. A queer tale, this. _1st Woman_. A spectre visited you? _Vashti_. Indeed, a spectre. _1st Woman_. That have I never seen. Was it the kind with nose and mouth grown sharp To an eagle's bill, and claws upon its fingers, The curve of them pasted with a bloody glue? _Vashti_. The spectre was--my beauty. _3rd Woman_. It is as I said. O Queen, send for a wise man in the morning; And let him leech thy spirit. _4th Woman_. I've heard, the best Riddance for evil notions in the mind, Is for a toad to sit upon the tongue; While, breathed against the scalp, some power of spells Loosens the clasp the notion hath digg'd deep Into the soul; so that it passeth down, Shaken and mastered, and creeps into the toad,-- _3rd Woman_. Which gives a foolish kick or start to feel it,-- _4th Woman_. Then the trapt notion may be easily burnt. _Vashti_. Yea?--I think mine would not burn easily. With fire, with such indignant fire as pride Yields, when it must destroy itself to feel The power of the world touch it with humbling flame,-- With such a fire, whose heat you know not of, Have I assayed this--notion, didst thou say? And it stood upright, with its shape unquencht, And lived within the fire. _3rd Woman_. Thou hast it wrong. _4th Woman_. Thou hast not understood the cure we meant. _2nd Woman_. Stop brabbling, fools; I would hear the Queen's mind. _1st Woman_. I too; I hate a thing I cannot skill; And thee and all that lives in thee, O Queen, I would keep friendly to my spirit; yet I do suspect something amazing in thee. _Vashti_. And if thou seest not how slippery Is women's place in the world of men, 'tis like Thou wilt amazedly the vision take, When I have led thee up my tower of thought. _2nd Woman_. How are we dangerous? Are we not women, Man's endless need? _Vashti_. Ay, and therein the danger! Is it not possible he hate the need? For not as he were a beast it urges him: He is aware of it, he knows its force,-- The kind of beasts is in their blood alone, But man is blood and spirit. And in him, As in all creature, is the word from God, "Utter thyself in joy." _2nd Woman_. And we his joy. _Vashti_. But such an one that may become, perhaps, Something not utterance, but strict commanding, Yea, mastery, like the dancing in the blood Of one bitten by spiders. And it is Spirit, Spirit enjoying woman, that hath sent A beating poison in the blood of man, The poison which is lust. Spirit was given To use life as a sense for ecstasy; Life mixt with Spirit must exult beyond Sex-madden'd men and sex-serving women, Into some rapture where sweet fleshly love Is as the air wherein a music rings. But blood hath captured Spirit; Spirit hath given The strength of its desire of joy to make What ecstasy it may of woman's beauty, And of this only, doing no more than train The joys of blood to be more keen and cunning; As men have trained and tamed wild lives of the forests, Breeding them to more excellent shape and size And tireless speed, and to know the words of men. So the wise masterful Spirit rules the joys That come all fierce from roaming the dark blood; They are broken to his desire, they are wily for him, A pack of lusts wherewith the Spirit hunts Pleasure; and the chief prey the pleasure hid In woman. _1st Woman_. What joys are these? _Vashti_. What joys? The joys of rutting beasts, tamed to endure, Tamed to be always swift to answer Spirit, Yet fiercer for their taming, wilder hungers; So that the Spirit, if he hunt them not, Fears to be torn by them in mutiny. Now know you woman's beauty! 'Tis these joys, The heat of the blood's desires, changed and mastered By the desire of spirit, trained to serve Spirit with lust, spirit with woman enjoy'd. _2nd Woman_. Queen, I am beautiful, and cannot boast Thy subtle thinking; and to one like me, What matters whence come beauty, so I have it? Let it be but the witless mating of beasts, Tamed and curiously knowing itself And cunning in its own delight: What then? The nightingale desires his little lass, And that brings out of his heart a radiant song; A man desires a woman, and for song Out of his heart comes beauty, that like flame Reaches towards her, and covers her limbs with light. If it so please thee, say that neither loves Aught but his life's desire, fashioning it Adorably to marvellous song and beauty. What then? Enough that the wonder lights on me, To me is paid the worship of the wonder. _Vashti_. O well I know how strong we are in man; His senses have our beauty for their god, And his delight is built about us like Towering adoration, housing worship.-- The spirit of man may dwell in God: the world, From the soft delicate floor of grass to those Rafters of light and hanging cloths of stars, Is but the honour in God's mind for man, Wrought into glorious imagination. But women dwell in man; our temple is The honour of man's sensual ecstasy, Our safety the imagined sacredness Fashion'd about us, fashion'd of his pleasure. Beauty hath done this for us, and so made Woman a kind within the kind of man. Yea, there is more than this: a mighty need Hath man made of his woman in the world. Now man walks through his fate in fellowship Of two companion spirits; ay, and these With double mastery go on with him. The one in black disgraceful weeds is Toil; She sows with never-ending gesture all The path before his feet, cursing the way She drags him on with growth of flouting crops, Urchin thistles, and rank flourishing nettles. But the other has a wear of woven gleam, And with soft hand beseeches him his face Away from the hardships of his hurt stung feet, That with his eyes he may desire her looks: And she is Beauty of Woman, man's dear blessing. And if you would be wise, be well afraid To think you have more office than to be A sweet delicious while amid man's hours Of worldly labour: we are too precious, so. Yet see you not how this that Spirit hath done Is also dangerous?--For there are mightier needs! There's no content for Spirit in the world Till he has striven out of bounded fate, And sent an infinite desire forth Into the whole eternity of things. Yea, spirit ails with loathing secretly The irremediable force of being; Unless, with free expatiate desire, He shape into the endless burning flux Of starry world blindly adventuring Some steady righteous destiny for Spirit: Even as dreaming brain fashions the fume Of life asleep to marshall'd imagery. But we are in the way of this: and man, The more he needs to announce upon the world, Over him going like a storming air, That fashioning word which utters the divine Imagination working in him like anger; The more he finds his virtue caught and clogged In the fierce luxury he hath made of woman. Thence are we sin, thence deliciously Persuading man refuse his highest ardour. Too easily kindled was the ecstasy Of fleshly passion, with a joyous flame Too readily answering the Spirit's fire! He burns with us alone, so fragrantly His noblest vigour swoons delighted. Yea, Women, I tell you, not far now is man From hating us, so passionate the joy Of loving us, so mightily drawing down Into the service of his pleasure here All forces of his being. The pleasure soon Becomes a shame, scarce to be spoken aloud; And in best minds, either detested doting Man's joy in woman's beauty will become; Or a strict binding fire, holding him down In lust of beauty where no beauty is. [_The_ KING'S MESSENGER _comes in_. _Messenger_. To Vashti, to the Queen of the world, to her In whom the striving beauty of the world Hath made perfection, from the King I come. And the King bids me say, Rise from thy feast; For thou must be to-night thyself a feast: The vision of thy loveliness must now Feed with astonishment my vassals' hearts. Therefore thou art to come. _Vashti_. And tell the King I will not come. _Messenger_. What was there in my words Thou dost not understand?--I say, the King Would show thy beauty to his under-kings, That with this also they may be amazed And utterly fear his fortune. _Vashti_. So. Go back, Tell the King I have hearkened to his message, And tell him I will not come. _Messenger_. What sickness shall I say has lighted on thee, So that thou canst not come? _Vashti_. Thou weariest me. Say this to the King, Vashti will not come. Are they not plain, my words? Canst thou not learn them? _Messenger_. Give me some softer speech. Must I not fear I shall earn whipping if I take these words? _Vashti_. I pray thee, go. Thou art a trouble here; Seest thou not how all these feasting women Pause, and the pleasure is distrest in them? Thou hast thy message: say, She will not come.-- Back to the King, now! _Messenger_. I am whipt for this. [_He goes_. _Vashti_. It seems, my sisters, we have changed our moods. But now, my mind was heavy, you were blithe; And in a moment, you, behold, are fixt Gazing like desperate things, while I rejoice. _1st Woman_. Rejoice! thou dost rejoice? then madness does. _Vashti_. I know not that: but certainly I know A mind, that has been feeling for long time The greatness of some hovering event Poised over life, will rejoice marvellously When the event falls, suddenly seizing life: Like faintness when a thunderstorm comes down, That turns to exulting when the lightning flares, Shattering houses, making men afraid. And this is my event: I am its choice. Yea, not as a storm, but as an eagle now It stoops on me; and, though I am its prey, I am lifted by majestic wings, my soul Is clothed in swiftness of a mighty soaring. _3rd Woman_. What glory can her wondrous eyes behold? _4th Woman_. Seemeth her flesh to glow! and her throat pants As one who feels a god within her, come Out of his heaven to enjoy her. _2nd Woman_. Ay, Now it is true, the Queen is beautiful; She could, so looking, enrage love in one Whose blood a hundred years had frozen dry. _1st Woman_. Ah, but I fear thee, Queen: this dreadful mood Will break the pleasantness of friendship thou Hast kept for me, as a ship in a gale is broken. _Vashti_. Ay, very like: and the event will rouse Such work in the water where your comfort sails, More than my fortune will to pieces blow; You too I think will get some perilous tossing From what proves my destruction. _2nd Woman_. And, so knowing, For mere insane delight in violent things, Wilt thou awake in the fickle mood of men Again that ancient ignominy which once, Till beauty freed them, loaded the souls of women? _3rd Woman_. Truly, long time will work what now thou doest. _Vashti_. I know not rightly what I here begin; No more than one, who stands in midst of wind On a tall mountain, knows what breaking down The earth must have ere the wind's speed is done, And it hath drawn out of the drenched soil The clinging vapours, and made bright the air. _2nd Woman_. But we'll not have thee disobedient. The King's mind is a summer over us; Thou with a storm wilt fill him, and the hail That shatters thee will leave us bruised and weeping. _Vashti_. Be sulky in his arms: the weather soon Will pleasantly favour thee again. _4th Woman_. No, no; Not because from our heaven of man's mind Thou wilt bring down on us a rain of scorn, But because thou art wicked, thou must go And tell the King the wine was rash in thee. _Vashti_. I must! _3rd Woman_. Thou must indeed: words such as thine Never were impudent in men's ears before. _2nd Woman_. We will not have thee disobedient. _1st Woman_. Here comes another: gentle words, my Queen, Let him take from thee now, and swiftly follow Contrite, and let the beauty of thy grief Bend pleading against the King's furious eyes. [_The_ POET _comes in, and kneels_. _Poet_. I will not ask thee what strange anger sent That blaze of proud contempt in the King's face: But ere the voice of the King seals up thy life In an unalterable judgment, I Am granted now to come as his last message: And, as I will, to speak. Here then I am Not as commanding, but on my knees beseeching, And for myself beseeching. _Vashti_. What hast thou To do with this? and wherefore wert thou chosen? _Poet_. I was to praise the splendour of the King; And I made thee his splendour; and the King, Knowing my truth, would have thee brought, to break All the pride of his under-kings, already Desperate with his riches, and now seeing What marvellous fortune also hath his love, How marvellously delighted. _Vashti_. Get thee back: And tell the King 'tis time his judgment fell. _Poet_. Not till thou hearest me. _Vashti_. I will not hear thee. Wouldst thou go on before me, and say, Look, This is the woman which I told you of, You kings; does she not, as I said, stir up Quaking desire through all your muscles? Look, And thank the King for showing you his lust!-- I will not hear thee. _Poet_. Dost thou not know, my Queen, That, when I taught thee songs, thou taughtest me The divine secret, Beauty? My small tunes Were games to thee; but now I am he who knows How man may walk upon Eternity Wearing the world as a god wears his power, The world upon him as a burning garment; For I am he whose spirit knoweth beauty,-- And thou art the knowledge, Queen! Therefore thou must Come with me to the kings of all the nations; For the whole earth must know of thee. These kings, Though it be but a lightning-moment struck Upon the darkness of their ignorant hearts, Must know what I know; that there is a beauty, Only in thee shown forth in bodily sign, Which can of life make such triumphant glee, The force of the world seems but man's spirit utter'd. _Vashti_. And what am I to know?--This must, no doubt, Content me, that we are as wine, and men By us have senses drunk against his toil Of knowing himself, for all his boasting mind, Caught by the quiet purpose of the world, Burnt up by it at last, like something fallen In molten iron streaming. But I know Not drunken may man's soul master his world; And I now make for woman a new mood, Wherein she will not bear to know herself A heady drug for man.--I will not come. _Poet_. I, who have brought thy insult on the King, Will scarce escape his judgment. But not this My pleading. Seest thou not how wonderfully The mean affairs of living fill with gleam, Like pools of water lying in the sun, Because above men's minds renown of thee, The certain knowledge of beauty, now presides? It must not be that thou, for a whim of scorn, Wilt let thyself be made unseen, unheard of. Beauty is known in thee; but, without thee, It is a rumour buzzing hardly heard. And without beauty men are scurrying ants, Rapid in endless purpose unenjoyed; Or newts in holes under the banks of ponds, Feeding and breeding without sound or light. For the one thing that is the god in man Is a delight that admirably knows Itself delighted; and it is but beauty. And thou art beauty known. _Vashti_. Truly, I say, I know not how to bear it; that for you To feel yourselves, though in the depth of the world, Dizzy, and thence as if elate on high, We women are devised like drunkenness. And what are we to make of ourselves here, When in the joy of us you think the world No more than your spirits crying out for joy? Is this your love, to dream a god of man, And women to keep as wine to make you dream?-- Now, back! or the eunuchs handle thee. [_He goes_. _Vashti_. You will not hear of me after this night, And thus I say farewell. It may be, far In time not yet appointed, our life's spirit Will know its fate, through all the thickets of grief, As simply and as gladly as one's eyes Greet the blue weather shining behind trees. Yea, and I think there will be more than this: Is not the world a terrible thing, a vision Of fierce divinity that cares not for us? Do we not seem immortal good desire, Mortally wronged by capture in swift being Made of a world that holds us firm for ever? And yet is it not beautiful, the world? How read you that? How is our wrong delightful? Thus it is: Spirit finding the world fair, Is spirit in dim perception of its own Radiant desire piercing the worldly shadow. But what is dim will become glorious clear: All in a splendour will the Spirit at last Stand in the world, for all will be naught else But Spirit's own perfect knowledge of itself; Yea, this dark mighty seeming of the world Is but the Spirit's own power unsubdued; And as the unruled vigours of thought in sleep Crowd on the brain, and become dream therein; So the strange outer forces of man's spirit Are the appearing world. But all at last, Subdued, becomes self-knowing ecstasy, The whole world brightens into Spirit's desire. This is for Spirit to be lord of life; And man, with foolish hope looking for this, Takes the ravishing drunkenness he hath From us, for knowledge of the Spirit's power. But it will come by love. It will be twain Who go together to this height of mastery Over the world, governing it as song Is govern'd by the heart of him who sings; But never one by means of one shall reach it: Not man alone, nor woman alone, but each Enabling each, together, twain in one. [_The_ KING'S MESSENGER _comes in_. _Messenger_. I speak to the rebellious woman Vashti. Thou art no more a Queen; thou hast no place In the King's house, nor in the life of men: Thus art thou judged. Go forth now; let the night Befriend thee, for no other friend thou hast, For the day shall reveal thee to men's eyes, And they, obedient to the King, will hate thee. Therefore be gone: and as the beasts have homes In the wild ground, have thy home from henceforth. _Vashti_. Gives the King reason for this judgment? _Messenger_. Yea; Because thou art a danger to all marriage, Because men are dishonoured in their rule Of women by thy insult, thou art judged. _2nd Woman_. But if the King had heard her crazy words He would have put her where they tame with thongs Maniacs. _4th Woman_. When the King hath slept, we will To-morrow crave his presence, and will stand In humble troop before him, thanking him For that his virtue hath this wicked woman Purged from among us, saved us from infection. _1st Woman_. Alas, my Queen! where lies thy journey now? _Vashti_. Ay, where to go? What shelter for me now Will any of the dwelt earth dare to give? My beauty as a branding now will mark me; And shame will run before me, and await My coming, wheresoever I would lodge. For out of Shushan to the ends of the earth Great news runs, with a hidden soundless speed Through secret channels in the folks' dim mind, As water races through smooth sloping gutters. Swifter than any feet could bear the tale, Going unheard, already posts abroad A buried river, and will soon burst up In towns and markets, far as the width of day, A bubbling clamour, wonderful wild news: "Vashti the Queen is judged and forced to go Roaming the earth, outcast and infamous; Look out for her! Be ready, if she comes, With stones and hooting voices!"--Fare you well, Women whom once I knew. You are quit of me: Pardon me if I add, And I of you. IV Into the darkness fared the outcast Queen; Fearless her face, and searching with proud gaze The impenetrable hour. Behind her burned The sky, held by the open kiln of the town In a great breath of fire, yellow and red, From out the festival streets, and myriad links. Still might she taste, and still must choke to taste, The fragrance of sweet oils and gums aflame Capturing the cool night with spicy riches; Still after her through the hollow moveless air The sounded ceremonies came, the cry Of dainty lust in winding tune of fifes, The silver fury of cymbals clamouring Like frenzy in a woman-madden'd brain; And drumming underneath the whole wild noise, Like monstrous hatred underneath desire, The thunder of the beaten serpent-skins. Yea, in the town behind her, flaring Shushan, She heard Man, meaning to adore himself, Throned on the wealth of earth as God in heaven, And making music of his glorying thought, Merely betray the mastery of his blood, His sexual heart, his main idolatry,-- Woman, and his lust to devour her beauty, Himself devoured ceaselessly by her beauty. And well she knew, to herself bitterly smiling, How the King seated amid his fellow-kings Devised his grievous rage, feeling himself Insulted in his dearest mind, his rule Over the precious pleasure of his women Wounded: how the man's wrath would hiss and swell Like gross spittle spat into red-hot coals. But as the Queen fared through the blinded hour, Sudden against the darkness of her eyes There came a wind of light. Crimson it was, With smokey lightnings braided, in its first Swift surge into the gloom before her face; But it began to golden, and became Astonishingly white. And as she stood With rigour in her nerves, a mighty shudder Ravish the light, and in the midst appeared Vision, a goddess, terrible and kind; And to the Queen the goddess spoke, in voice That healed her anger with its quietness. _Ishtar_. I am the goddess Ishtar, and thou art My servant. Wilt any of thou help me? _Vashti_. Am I then one whom gods may help? I am By men judged hateful: surely I am thereby Made over to the demons, and not thine. _Ishtar_. Yet art thou mine, because thou knowest well Thou disobeyest me. _Vashti_. How do I so? _Ishtar_. I am the goddess of the power of women, And passion in the hearts of men is my Divinity. _Vashti_. Yea, then I disobey thee. _Ishtar_. And yet thou shalt not fear me wronging thee: Tell me, O thou Despair, whither thou goest? _Vashti_. Thy taunt goes past me; I am not despair. _Ishtar_. Verily, but thou art. Is not thy mind A hot revolter from the service due To my divinity, passion in men's hearts? Is there aught else that thou mayst serve? Thou knowest There is naught else: therefore thou art Despair. _Vashti_. That I am infamous, I know. But even now, Now when I learn I am to gods no more Than to the lust of men, I will not be Despair. _Ishtar_. Who means so greatly to serve pride, That the service of the world is a thing loath'd, Is desperate, avoided by mankind, Unpleasing to the gods. We, who look down, Know that the world and pride may both be served. Yet also that it was too hard for thee We know, and pardon. Thou shalt tell me now Why thou refusest the life given thee. _Vashti_. Because I will not, woman should be sin Amid man's life. You gods have given man Desire that too much knows itself; and thence He is all confounded by the pleasure of us. How sweetly doth the heart of man begin Desiring us, how like music and the green First happiness of the year! But this can grow To uncontrollably crowding lust, beyond All power of delight to utter, thence Inwardly turned to anger and detesting! Till, looking on us with strange eyes, man finds We are not his desire: it was but sex Inflamed, so that it roused the breaking forth Of secret fury in him, consuming life, Yea, even the life that would reach up to know The heaven of gods above it. _Ishtar_. And what, for this, Dost thou refuse? _Vashti_. I refuse woman's beauty! Not merely to be feasting with delight Man's senses, I refuse; but even his heart I will not serve. Are we to be for ever Love's passion in man, and never love itself? Always the instrument, never the music? _Ishtar_. I have not done with man.--Thou sayest true, Women are as a sin in life: for that The gods have made mankind in double sex. Sin of desiring woman is to be The knowledgeable light within man's soul, Whereby he kills the darken'd ache of being. But shall I leave him there? or shall I leave Woman amid these hungers? Nay: I hold The rages of these fires as a soft clay Obedient to my handling; there shall be Of man desiring, and of woman desired, A single ecstasy divinely formed, Two souls knowing themselves as one amazement. All that thou hatest to arouse in man Prepareth him for this; and thou thyself Art by thy very hate prepared: wherefore The gods forgive thee, seeing what comes of thee. Behold now! of my godhead I will make Thy senses burn with vision, storying The spirit of woman growing from loved to love. _The First Vision: Helen_. Helen am I, a name astonishing The world, a fame that rings against the sky, Like an alarm of brass smitten to sound The news of war against the stone of mountains. I move in power through the minds of men, And have no power to hold my power back. Men's passions fawn upon my feet, as waves That fiercely fawn after the going wind; But not as the wind, shaking off the foam Of the pursuing lust of the moaning waves, And over the clamour of the evil seas' Monstrous word running lightly, unhurt. They fawn upon me, all the lusts of the world, Bewildering my steps with straining close, And breathe their horrible spittle against me. Passions cry round me with the yelling cry Of dogs chained and starving and smelling blood. Yea, for through me the world becomes a den Of insane greed. In helpless beauty I stand Alone in the midst of dreadful adoration; And, round me thronged, the fawning, fawning lusts Open their throats upon me and whine and lick My feet with dripping tongues, or gaze to pant Hot hunger in my face. For I am made To set their hearts grim to possess my life, And with an anger of love devour my beauty; And yet to seal up in their mastered hearts The rage, and bring them in croucht worship down Before me, bent with impotent desire. A quiet place the world was ere I came A strife, a dream of fire, into its sleep; And with their senses ended men's delights. But I struck through their senses burning news Of impossible endless things, and mixt Wild lightning into their room of darkness.--Then Agony, and a craving for delight Escaping sensual grasp, began in men; And the agony was poison in the health Of sweet desire.--The joy of me men tried To compass with strange frenzy and desire Made new with cunning. But still at my feet The lusts they tarr on me crouch down and fawn And snarl to be so fearful of their prey. I see men's faces grin with helpless lust About me; crooked hands reach out to please Their hot nerves with the flower of my skin; I see the eyes imagining enjoyment, The arms twitching to seize me, and the minds Inflamed like the glee-kindled hearts of fiends. And through the world the fawning, fawning lusts Hound me with worship of a ravenous yearning: And I am weary of maddening men with beauty. _The Second Vision: Sappho_. Into how fair a fortune hath man's life Fallen out of the darkness!--This bright earth Maketh my heart to falter; yea, my spirit Bends and bows down in the delight of vision, Caught by the force of beauty, swayed about Like seaweed moved by the deep winds of water: For it is all the news of love to me. Through paths pine-fragrant, where the shaded ground Is strewn with fruits of scarlet husk, I come, As if through maidenhood's uncertainty, Its darkness coloured with strange untried thoughts; Hither I come, here to the flowery peak Of this white cliff, high up in golden air, Where glowing earth and sea and divine light Are in mine eyes like ardour, and like love Are in my soul: love's glowing gentleness, The sunny grass of meadows and the trees, Towers of dark green flame, and that white town Where from the hearths, a fragrance of burnt wood, Blue-purple smoke creeps like a stain of wine Along the paved blue sea: yea, all this kindness Lies amid salt immeasurable flowing, The power of the sea, passion of love. I, Sappho, have made love the mastery Most sacred over man; but I have made it A safety of things gloriously known, To house his spirit from the darkness blowing Out of the vast unknown: from me he hath The wilful mind to make his fortune fair. Yea, here I stand for the whole earth to see How life, breathing its fortune like sweet air, Mixing it with the kindled heart of man, May utter it proud against the double truth Of darkness fronting him and following him, In a prevailing, burning, marvellous lie! And it is love kindles the burning of it, The quivering flame of spoken-forth desire, Which man hath made his place within the world,-- Love, learnt of Sappho! and not only bright With gladness: I have devised an endless pain, The fearful spiritual pain of love, to hold In a firm fire, unalterably bright, The shining forth of Spirit's imagination Declared against the investing dark, a light Of pain and joy, equal for man and woman. _The Third Vision: Theresa_. Come, golden bridegroom, break this mortal night, Five times chained with darkness of my senses. At last now visit my desire, and turn Thy feet, and the flaming path of thy feet, Unto these walls lockt round me like a death. Death I would have them till thou comest; yea, The earthly stone whereof man's fortune here Is made, strongly into deliberate death I have built about my soul, to fend its life From gazes of the world. I am too proud To endure the world's desire of my beauty; I know myself too marvellous in love To be the joy of aught that thou hast made: I am to be bride of thee, of the world's maker. O God, the heart I have from thee, the heart Uttering itself in an endless word of love, Is sealed up in the stone of worldly night: Set hitherward the flaming way of thy feet, Break my night, and enter in unto me. Come, wed my spirit; and like as the sea, Into the shining spousal ecstasy Of sun and wind, riseth in cloudy gleam, So let the knowing of my flesh be clouds Of fire, mounting up the height of my spirit, Fire clouding with flame the marriage hour Wherein my spirit keeps thy dreadful light Away from Heaven in a bridal kiss,-- Fire of bodily sense in spiritual glee Held, as fire of water in sunlit air. Ah God, beautiful God, my soul is wild With love of thee. Hitherward turn thy feet, Turn their golden journeying towards this night,-- This night of cavernous earth; and now let shine These walls of stone, against thy nearing love, Like pure glass smitten by the power of the sun; And let them be, in thy descending love, Like glass in a furnace, falling molten down, Back from thy burning feet streaming and flowing, Leaving me naked to thy bright desire.-- Enjoy me, God, enjoy thy bride to-night. _Vashti_. Too well I know the first, the scarlet clad; And she, that was in shining white and gold, Was as the sound of bees and waters, at last Heard by one long closed in the dins of madness. But what was she, the black-robed, with the eyes So fearfully alight, the last who spoke? _Ishtar_. Take none of these for perfect: they are moods Purifying my women to become My unexpressive, uttermost intent.-- As music binds into a strict delight The manifold random sounds that shake the air, Even so fashioned must I have the being That fills with rushing power the boundless spirit: Amidst it, musically firm, a joy That is a fiery knowledge of itself, Thereby self-continent, a globed fire. And she who gave thee wonder, is the sign Of those who firmest, brightest hold their being Fastened and seized in one enjoyed desire. Yet even they are but a making ready For what I perfectly intend: in them Joy of self-bound desire hath burnt itself To extreme purity; I am free thereby To work my meaning through them, my divinity. Yea, such clean fire in man and such in woman To mingle wonderfully, that the twain Become a moment of one blazing flame Infinitely upward towering, far beyond The boundless fate of spirit in the world. But in the way to this are maladies And anguish; and as a perilous bridge Over the uncontrolled demanding world, Virginity, passionate self-possessing, Must build itself supreme, unbreakable. --I leave thee: as thou mayst, be comforted By prophecy of what I mean in life. Against thee is not Heaven, and thou must Endure the hatred men will throw upon thee. * * * * * The shining place where Ishtar looked at her Empty the Queen beheld; and into mist The glory fainted, and the stars came through Untroubled. Into the night the Queen went on. PART II IMPERFECTION MARY [A LEGEND OF THE FORTY-FIVE] I _A street in Carlisle leading to the Scottish Gate. Three girls_, MARY, KATRINA, and JEAN. _Katrina_. What a year this has been! _Mary_. There's many a lass Will blench to hear the date of it--Forty-five,-- Poor souls! Why will the men be fighting so, Running away to find out death, as if It were some tavern full of light and fiddling? And when the doors are shut, what of the girls Who gave themselves away, and still must live? Are not men thoughtless? _Katrina_. Leaving only kisses To be remembered by. _Jean_. That's not so bad As when the dead lads went beyond kissing. _Mary_. Poor souls! Well, Carlisle has at least three hearts That are not crying for a lad who's gone Listening to the lean old Crowder, Death. We needn't mope: and yet it's sad. _Jean_. Come on, Why are we dawdling? All the heads are up, Steepled on spikes above the Scottish Gate,-- Some of the rebels rarely handsome too. _Mary_. Won't it be rather horrible? _Katrina_. A row Of chopt-off heads sitting on spikes--ugh! _Jean_. Yes, And I daresay blood dribbling here and there. _Mary_. Don't, Jean! I am going back. I was Forbid the gate. _Katrina_. And so was I. _Jean_. And I. _Katrina_. But a mere peep at them? _Jean_. Yes, come on, Mary. _Mary_. We might just see how horrible they are. _Jean_. Sure, they will make us shudder; _Katrina_. Or else cry. [_A_ MAN _meets them_. _Man_. Are you for the show, my girls? _Jean_. We aren't your girls. _Katrina_. Do you mean the heads upon the Scottish Gate? _Man_. Ay, that's the show, a pretty one. _Jean_. Are all The rebels' heads set up? _Man_. All, all; their cause Is fallen flat; but go you on and see How wonderly their proud heads are elate. _Katrina_. Do any look as if they died afeared? _Man_. Go and learn that yourselves. And when you mark How grimly addled all the daring is Now in those brains, do as your hearts shall bid you, And that is weep, I hope. _Mary_. O let's go back. _Jean_. We have no friends spiked on the Scottish Gate. _Man_. No? Well, there's quite a quire of voices there, Blessing the King's just wisdom for his stern Strong policy with the rebels. _Mary_. Who are those?-- I think it's fiendish to have killed so many. _Man_. The chattering birds, my lass, and droning flies: They're proper Whigs, are birds and flies,--or else The Whigs are proper crows and carrion-bugs. [_He goes on past them_. _Katrina_. A Jacobite? _Jean_. That's it, I warrant you. One of the stay-at-homes. _Mary_. Now promise me, We'll only take a glimpse, girls, a short glimpse. _Jean (laughing)_. Yes, just to see how horrible they are. [_They go on towards the gate_. II _The Scottish Gate, Carlisle. Among the crowd_. _Mary_. O why did we come here? _Jean_. One, two, three, four-- A devil's dozen of them at the least. _Katrina_. Poor lads! They did not need to set them up So high, surely. Which is the one you'ld call Prettiest, Jean? _Jean_. That fellow with the sneer; The axe's weight could not ruffle his brow,-- How signed it is with scorn! _Katrina_. Ah yes, he's dark And you are red: Mary and I will choose Some golden fellow. Which do you think, Mary? _Jean_. O, but mine is the one! Look--do you see?-- He must have put his curls away from the axe; Or did they part themselves when he knelt down, And let the stroke have his nape white and bare? O could a girl not nestle snug and happy Against a neck, with such hair covering her! _Katrina_. Now, Mary, we must make our yellow choice; You've got good eyes; which do you fancy?--Jean! What ails her? _Jean_. How she stares! which is the one She singles out? That topmost boy it is,-- Pretty enough for a flaxen poll indeed. Is that your lad, Mary? _Katrina_. She's ill or fey; They are too much for her; and I truly Am nearly weeping for them and their wives and lasses. Her eyes don't budge! She's fastened on his face With just the look that one would have to greet The ghost of one's own self. See, all her blood Is trapt in her heart,--pale she is as he. _A Man in the Crowd_. Can't you see she's fainting? 'Tis no sight For halfling girls. _Jean_. Halfling yourself. _Katrina_. Mary! _Mary_. Let us go home now: help me there, Katrina. _Katrina_. Yes, dear, but are you ill? _Mary_. No: let us go home. _Katrina (to Jean)_. Come, Jean. Did you not hear her gasp? We must Be with her on her way home. _Jean_. You go then. I've not lookt half enough at these. Besides-- [MARY _and_ KATRINA _go_. Well, sir, how dare you speak to girls like that, When they're alone? _The Man_. You needn't be so short; I guess you're one to take fine care of yourself. _Jean_. Yes, and I'ld choose a better-looking man Than you, my chap, if I wanted company. _The Man_. Come this way, you'll see better. _Jean_. Impudence! Who said your arm might be there? _The Man_. O, it's all right. _Jean_. And what do you think of the rebels now they're dead? III _Mary lying awake in bed_. O let me reason it out calmly! Have I No stars to take me through this terror, poured Suddenly, dreadfully, on to my heart and spirit? Why is it I, of all the world I only Who must so love against nature? I knew Always, that not like harbour for a boat, Not a smooth safety, Love would take my soul; But like going naked and empty-handed Into the glitter and hiss of a wild sword-play, I should fall in love, and in fear and danger: But a danger of white light, a fear of sharpness Keen and close to my heart, not as it proves,-- My heart hit by a great dull mace of terror! * * * * * So it has come to me, my hope, my wonder! Now I perceive that I was one of those Who, till love comes, have breath and beating blood In one continual question. All the beauty My happy senses took till now has been Drugg'd with a fiery want and discontent, That settled in my soul and lay there burning. The hills, wearing their green ample dresses Right in the sky's blue courts, with swerving folds Along the rigour of their stony sinews-- (Often they garr'd my breath catch and stumble),-- The moon that through white ghost of water went, Till she was ring'd about with an amber window,-- The summer stars seen winking through dusk leaves; All the earth's manners and most loveliness, All made my asking spirit stir within me, And throb with a question, whose answer is, (As now I know, but then I did not know) There is a Man somewhere meant for me.-- And I have seen the face of him for whom My soul was made! Ah, somewhere? Where is that? Have I not dreamt that he is gone away, Gone ere he loved me? Now I lose myself. I only have seen my boy's murder'd head. * * * * * Yes, again light breaks through and quells my thought. The whole earth seemed as it belonged to me, A message spoken out in green and blue Specially to my heart; and it would say That some time, out of the human multitude A face would look into my soul, and sign All my nature, easily as it were wax, With its dear image; but after that impress I would all harden, so that nought could raze The minting of that seal from off my being. And yesterday it fell. An idle whim To see the rebels on the Scottish Gate,-- And there was the face of him I was made to love, There,--ah God,--on the gate, my murder'd lad! Did any girl have first-sight love like this? Not to have ever seen him, only seen Such piteous token that he has been born, Lived and grown up to beauty, the man who was meant To sleep upon my breast, and dead before The sweet custom of love could be between us! To have but seen his face?--Is that enough To make me clear he is my man indeed? Why, sure there are tales bordering on my lot In misery?--Of hearts who have been stabbed By knowledge that their mates were in the earth, Yet never could come near enough to be healed; Of those who have gone longing all a life, Because a voice heard singing or a gesture Seen from afar gospell'd them of love; And no more than the mere announcement had. Ah, but all these to mine were kindly dealing; For not till they'd trepann'd him out of life Did he, poor laggard, come to claim my soul.-- O my love, but your ears played you falsely When they were taken by Death's wily tunes! * * * * * Am I so hardly done to, who have seen My lover's face, been near enough to worship The very writing of his spirit in flesh? For having that in my ken, I am not far From loving with my eyes all his body. What a set would his shoulders have, and neck, To bear his goodly-purposed head; what gait And usage of his limbs!--Ah, do you smile? Why, even so I knew your smile would be, Just such an over-brimming of your soul. O love, love, love, then you have come to me! How I have stayed aching for you! Come close, Here's where you should have been long time, long time. It is your rightful place. And I had left Thinking you'ld come and kiss me over my heart! Ah lad, my lad, they told me you were dead. IV _At Dawn. The Scottish Gate_. _Mary (on her way to the gate, singing to herself)_. As a wind that has run all day Among the fragrant clover, At evening to a valley comes; So comes to me my lover. And as all night a honey'd warmth Stays where the wind did lie, So when my lover leaves my arms My heart's all honey. But what have I to do with this? And when Was that song put in hiding 'mid my thought? I might be on my way to meet and give Good morrow to my--Ah! last night, last night! O fie! I must not dream so. [_At the Gate_. It _was_ I! I am the girl whose lover they have killed, Who never saw him until out of death He lookt into my soul. I was to meet Somewhere in life my lover, and behold, He has turned into an inn I dare not enter, And gazes through a window at my soul Going on labour'd with this loving body.-- Did I not sleep last night with you in my arms? I could have sworn it. Why should body have So large a part in love? For if 'twere only Spirit knew how to love, an easy road My feet had down to death. But I must want Lips against mine, and arms marrying me, And breast to kiss with its dear warmth my breast,-- Body must love! O me, how it must ache Before it is as numb as thine, dear boy! Poor darling, didst thou forget that I was made To wed thee, body and soul? For surely else Thou hadst not gone from life.-- Ah, folk already, Coming to curse the light with all their stares. V KATRINA _and_ JEAN. _Katrina_. Where are you off to, Jean, in such a tear? _Jean_. I'm busy. _Katrina_. O you light-skirts! who is it now? You think I can't guess what your business is? Is it aught fresh, or only old stuff warmed? _Jean_. Does not the smartness in your wits, Katrina, Make your food smack sourly?--Well, this time, It's serious with me. I believe I'm caught. _Katrina_. O but you've had such practice in being caught, You'll break away quite easily when you want. Tell me now who it is. _Jean_. The man who spoke When we were at the Scottish Gate that day. O, he's a dapper boy! Did you mark his eyes? _Katrina_. Nay, I saw nought but he was under-grown. _Jean_. Pooh! He can carry me. _Katrina_. Jean, have you heard Of Mary lately?--I vow she's in love. _Jean_. Never! with whom? _Katrina_. The thing's a wonder, Jean. She'll speak to no one now, and every day, Morning and evening, she's at the gate Gazing like a fey creature on that head She was so stricken to behold--you mind it?-- I tell you she's in love with it. _Jean_. O don't be silly. How can you fall in love with a dead man? And what good could he do you, if you did? One loves for kisses and for hugs and the rest; A spunky fellow,--that's the thing to love. But a dead man,--pah, what a foolery! _Katrina_. O yes, to you; for Love's a game for you. 'Twill turn out dangerous maybe, but still,--a game. _Jean_. Yes, the best kind of game a girl can play, And all the better for the risk, Katrina. But where the fun would be in Love if he You played with had not heart to jump, nor blood To tingle, nothing in him to go wild At seeing you betray your love for him, Beats me to understand. You'ld be as wise Blowing the bellows at a pile of stone As loving one that never lived for you. It isn't just to make a wind you blow, But to turn red fire into white quivering heat. Whatever she's after, 'tis not love, my girl: I know what love is. But perhaps she saw The poor lad living? Even had speech with him? _Katrina_. Not she; Mary has never known a lad I did not know as well. We've shared our lives As if we had been sisters, and I'm sure She's never been in love before. _Jean_. Before? Don't talk such sentimental nonsense-- _Katrina_. Why, If Love-at-first-sight can mean anything, Surely 'tis this: there's some one in the world Whom, if you come across him, you must love, And you could no more pass his face unmoved Than the year could go backwards. Well, suppose He dies just ere you meet him; and he dead, Ay, or his head alone, is given your eyes, It is enough: he is the man for you, All as if he were quick and signalling His heart to you in smiles. _Jean_. Believe me, dear, You've no more notion of the thing called Love Than a grig has of talking. But I have, And I'm off now to practise with my notions. _Katrina_. Now which is the real love,--hers or Mary's? VI _Before Dawn, At the Scottish Gate_. _Mary_. Beloved, beloved!--O forgive me That all these days questioning I have been, Struggled with doubts. Your power over me, That here slipt through the nets death caught you in, Lighted on me so greatly that my heart Could scarcely carry the amazement. Now I am awake and seeing; and I come To save you from this post of ignominy. A ladder I have filched and thro' the streets Borne it, on shoulders little used to weight. You'll say that I should not have bruised myself?-- But it is good, and an ease for me, to have Some ache of body.--Now if there's any chink In death, surely my love will reach to thee, Surely thou wilt be ware of how I go Henceforth through life utterly thine. And yet Pardon what now I say, for I must say it. I cannot thank thee, my dear murder'd lad, For mastering me so. What other girls Might say in blessing on their sweethearts' heads, How can I say? They are well done to, when Love of a man their beings like a loom Seizes, and the loose ends of purposes Into one beautiful desire weaves. But love has not so done to me: I was A nature clean as water from the hills, One that had pleased the lips of God; and now Brackish I am, as if some vagrom malice Had trampled up the springs and made them run Channelling ancient secrecies of salt. O me, what, has my tongue these bitter words In front of my love's death? Look down, sweetheart, From the height of thy sacred ignominy And see my shame. Nay, I will come up to thee And have my pardon from thy lips, and do The only good I can to thee, sweetheart. * * * * * I have done it: but how have I done it? And what's this horrible thing to do with me? How came it on the ground, here at my feet? O I had better have shirkt it altogether! What do I love? Not this; this is only A message that he left on earth for me, Signed by his spirit, that he had to go Upon affairs more worthy than my love. We women must give place in our men's thoughts To matters such as those. God, God, why must I love him? Why Must life be all one scope for the hawking wings Of Love, that none the mischief can escape?-- Well, I am thine for always now, my love, For this has been our wedding. No one else, Since thee I have had claspt unto my breast, May touch me lovingly.-- Light, it is light! What shall I do with it, now I have got it? O merciful God, must I handle it Again? I dare not; what is it to me? Let me off this! Who is it clutches me By the neck behind? Who has hold of me Forcing me stoop down? Love, is it thou? Spare me this service, thou who hast all else Of my maimed life: why wilt thou be cruel? O grip me not so fiercely. Love! Ah no, I will not: 'tis abominable-- JEAN I _The Parlour of a Public House. Two young men_, MORRIS _and_ HAMISH. _Hamish_. Come, why so moody, Morris? Either talk, Or drink, at least. _Morris_. I'm wondering about Love. _Hamish_. Ho, are you there, my boy? Who may it be? _Morris_. I'm not in love; but altogether posed I am by lovers. _Hamish_. They're a simple folk: I'm one. _Morris_. It's you I'm mainly thinking of. _Hamish_. Why, that's an honour, surely. _Morris_. Now if I loved The girl you love, your Jean, (look where she goes Waiting on drinkers, hearing their loose tongues; And yet her clean thought takes no more of soil Than white-hot steel laid among dust can take!)-- _Hamish_. You not in love, and talking this fine stuff? _Morris_. I say, if I loved Jean, I'ld do without All these vile pleasures of the flesh, your mind Seems running on for ever: I would think A thought that was always tasting them would make The fire a foul thing in me, as the flame Of burning wood, which has a rare sweet smell, Is turned to bitter stink when it scorches flesh. _Hamish_. Why specially Jean? _Morris_. Why Jean? The girl's all spirit! _Hamish_. She's a lithe burd, it's true; that, I suppose, Is why you think her made of spirit,--unless You've seen her angry: she has a blazing temper.-- But what's a girl's beauty meant for, but to rouse Lust in a man? And where's the harm in that,-- In loving her because she's beautiful, And in the way that drives me?--I dare say My spirit loves her too. But if it does I don't know what it loves. _Morris_. Why, man, her beauty Is but the visible manners of her spirit; And this you go to love by the filthy road Which all the paws and hoofs in the world tread too! God! And it's Jean whose lover runs with the herd Of grunting, howling, barking lovers,--Jean!-- _Hamish_. O spirit, spirit, spirit! What is spirit? I know I've got a body, and it loves: But who can tell me what my spirit's doing, Or even if I have one? _Morris_. Well, it's strange, My God, it's strange. A girl goes through the world Like a white sail over the sea, a being Woven so fine and lissom that her life Is but the urging spirit on its journey, And held by her in shape and attitude. And all she's here for is that you may clutch Her spirit in the love of a mating beast! _Hamish_. Why, she has fifty lovers if she has one, And fifty's few for her. _Morris_. I'm going out. If the night does me good, I'll come back here Maybe, and walk home with you. _Hamish_. O don't bother. If I want spirit, it will be for drinking. [MORRIS _goes out_. Spirit or no, drinking's better than talking. Who was the sickly fellow to invent That crazy notion spirit, now, I wonder? But who'd have thought a burly lout like Morris Would join the brabble? Sure he'll have in him A pint more blood than I have; and he's all For loving girls with words, three yards away! JEAN _comes in_. _Jean_. Alone, my boy? Who was your handsome friend? _Hamish_. Whoever he was he's gone. But I'm still here. _Jean_. O yes, you're here; you're always here. _Hamish_. Of course, And you know why. _Jean_. Do I? I've forgotten. _Hamish_. Jean, how can you say that? O how can you? _Jean_. Now don't begin to pity yourself, please. _Hamish_. Ah, I am learning now; it's truth they talk. You would undo the skill of a spider's web And take the inches of it in one line, More easily than know a woman's thought. I'm ugly on a sudden? _Jean_. The queer thing About you men is that you will have women Love in the way you do. But now learn this; We don't love fellows for their skins; we want Something to wonder at in the way they love. A chap may be as rough as brick, if you like, Yes, or a mannikin and grow a tail,-- If he's the spunk in him to love a girl Mainly and heartily, he's the man for her.-- My soul, I've done with all you pretty men; I want to stand in a thing as big as a wind; And I can only get your paper fans! _Hamish_. You've done with me? You wicked Jean! You'll dare To throw me off like this? After you've made, O, made my whole heart love you? _Jean_. You are no good. Your friend, now, seems a likely man; but you?-- I thought you were a torch; and you're a squib. _Hamish_. Not love you enough? Death, I'll show you then. _Jean_. Hands off, Hamish. There's smoke in you, I know, And splutter too. Hands off, I say. _Hamish_. By God Tell me to-morrow there's no force in me! _Jean_. Leave go, you little beast, you're hurting me: I never thought you'ld be so strong as this. Let go, or I'll bite; I mean it. You young fool, I'm not for you. Take off your hands. O help! [MORRIS _has come in unseen and rushes forward_. _Morris_. You beast! You filthy villainous fellow!--Now, I hope I've hurt the hellish brain in you. Take yourself off. You'll need a nurse to-night. [HAMISH _slinks out_. Poor girl! And are you sprained at all? That ruffian! _Jean_. O sir, how can I thank you? You don't know What we poor serving girls must put up with. We don't hear many voices like yours, sir. They think, because we serve, we've no more right To feelings than their cattle. O forgive me Talking to you. You don't come often here. _Morris_. No, but I will: after to-night I'll see You take no harm. And as for him, I'll smash him. _Jean_. Yes, break the devil's ribs,--I mean,--O leave me; I'm all distraught. _Morris_. Good night, Jean. My name's Morris. _Jean_. Good night, Morris--dear. O I must thank you. [_She suddenly kisses him_. Perhaps,--perhaps, you'll think that wicked of me? _Morris_. You wicked? O how silly!--But--good night. [_He goes_. _Jean_. The man, the man! What luck! My soul, what luck! II JEAN _by herself, undressing_. Yes, he's the man. Jean, my girl, you're done for, At last you're done for, the good God be thankt.-- That was a wonderful look he had in his eyes: 'Tis a heart, I believe, that will burn marvellously! Now what a thing it is to be a girl! Who'ld be a man? Who'ld be fuel for fire And not the quickening touch that sets it flaming?-- 'Tis true that when we've set him well alight (As I, please God, have set this Morris burning) We must be serving him like something worshipt; But is it to a man we kneel? No, no; But to our own work, to the blaze we kindled! O, he caught bravely. Now there's nothing at all So rare, such a wild adventure of glee, As watching love for you in a man beginning;-- To see the sight of you pour into his senses Like brandy gulpt down by a frozen man, A thing that runs scalding about his blood; To see him holding himself firm against The sudden strength of wildness beating in him! O what my life is waiting for, at last Is started, I believe: I've turned a man To a power not to be reckoned; I shall be Held by his love like a light thing in a river! III MORRIS _by himself_. It is a wonder! Here's this poor thing, Life, Troubled with labours of the endless war The lusty flesh keeps up against the spirit; And down amid the anger--who knows whence?-- Comes Love, and at once the struggling mutiny Falls quiet, unendurably rebuked: And the whole strength of life is free to serve Spirit, under the regency of Love. The quiet that is in me! The bright peace! Instead of smoke and dust, the peace of Love! Truly I knew not what a turmoil life Has been, and how rebellious, till this peace Came shining down! And yet I have seen things, And heard things, that were strangely meaning this,-- Telling me strangely that life can be all One power undisturbed, one perfect honour,-- Waters at noonday sounding among hills, Or moonlight lost among vast curds of cloud;-- But never knew I it is only Love Can rule the noise of life to heavenly quiet. Ah, Jean, if thou wilt love me, thou shalt have Never from me upon thy purity The least touch of that eager baseness, known, For shame's disguising, by the name of Love Most wickedly; thou shalt not need to fear Aught from my love, for surely thou shalt know It is a love that almost fears to love thee. IV _The Public House_. MORRIS _and_ JEAN. _Jean_. O, you are come again! _Morris_. Has he been here, That blackguard, with some insolence to you? _Jean_. Who? _Morris_. Why, that Hamish. _Jean_. Hamish? No, not he. _Morris_. I thought--you seemed so breathless-- _Jean_. But you've come Again! May I not be glad of your coming? Yes, and a little breathless?--Did you come Only because you thought I might be bullied? _Morris_. O, no, no, no, Only for you I came. _Jean_. And that's what I was hoping. _Morris_. If you could know How it has been with me, since I saw you! _Jean_. What can I know of your mind?--For my own Is hard enough to know,--save that I'm glad You've come again,--and that I should have cried If you'd not kept your word. _Morris_. My word?--to see Hamish does nothing to you? _Jean_. The fiend take Hamish! Do you think I'ld be afraid of him?--It's you I ought to be afraid of, were I wise. _Morris_. Good God, she's crying! _Jean_. Cannot you understand? _Morris_. O darling, is it so? I prayed for this All night, and yet it's unbelievable. _Jean_. You too, Morris? _Morris_. There's nothing living in me But love for you, my sweetheart. _Jean_. And you are mine, My sweetheart!--And now, Morris, now you know Why you are the man that ought to frighten me!-- Morris, I love you so! _Morris_. O, but better than this, Jean, you must love me. You must never think I'm like the heartless men you wait on here, Whose love is all a hunger that cares naught How hatefully endured its feasting must be By her who fills it, so it be well glutted! _Jean_. I did not say I was afraid of you; But only that, perhaps, I ought to be. _Morris_. No, no, you never ought. My love is one That will not have its passion venturous; It knows itself too fine a ceremony To risk its whole perfection even by one Unruly thought of the luxury in love. Nay, rather it is the quietness of power, That knows there is no turbulence in life Dare the least questioning hindrance set against The onward of its going,--therefore quiet, All gentle. But strong, Jean, wondrously strong! _Jean_. Yes, love is strong. I have well thought of that. It drops as fiercely down on us as if We were to be its prey. I've seen a gull That hovered with beak pointing and eyes fixt Where, underneath its swaying flight, some fish Was trifling, fooling in the waves: then, souse! And the gull has fed. And love on us has fed. _Morris_. Indeed 'tis a sudden coming; but I grieve To hear you make of love a cruelty. Sweetheart, it shall be nothing cruel to you! You shall not fear, in doing what love bids, Ever to know yourself unmaidenly. For see! here's my first kiss; and all my love Is signed in it; and it is on your hand.-- Is that a thing to fear?--But it were best I go now. This should be a privacy, Not even your lover near, this hour of first Strange knowledge that you have accepted love. I think you would feel me prying, if I stayed While your heart falters into full perceiving That you are plighted now forever mine. God bless you, Jean, my sweetheart.--Not a word? But you will thank me soon for leaving you: 'Tis the best courtesy I can do. [_He goes_. _Jean_. O, and I thought it was my love at last! I thought, from the look he had last night, I'd found That great, brave, irresistible love!--But this! It's like a man deformed, with half his limbs. Am I never to have the love I dream and need, Pouring over me, into me, winds of fire? HAMISH _comes in_. _Hamish_. Well? What's the mood to-night?--The girl's been crying! This should be something queer. _Jean_. It's you are to blame: You brought him here! _Hamish_. It's Morris this time, is it? And what has he done? _Jean_. He's insulted me. And you must never let me see him again. _Hamish_. Sure I don't want him seeing you. But still, If I'm to keep you safe from meeting him-- _Jean_. To look in his eyes would mortify my heart! _Hamish_. Then you'ld do right to pay me. _Jean_. What you please. _Hamish_. A kiss? _Jean_. Of course; as many as you like-- And of any sort you like. KATRINA I _On the sea-coast. Three young men_, SYLVAN, VALENTINE, _and_ FRANCIS. _Valentine_. Well, I suppose you're out of your fear at last, Sylvan. This land's empty enough; naught here Feminine but the hens, bitches, and cows. Now we are safe! _Francis_. Horribly safe; for here, If there are wives at all, they are salted so They have no meaning for the blood, bent things Philosophy allows not to be women. _Valentine_. But think of the husbands that must spend their nights Alongside skin like bark. It is the men That have the tragedy in these weather'd lands. _Francis_. No thought of that! We are monks now. And, indeed, This is a cloister that a man could like, This blue-aired space of grassy land, that here, Just as it touches the sea's bitter mood, Is troubled into dunes, as it were thrilled, Like a calm woman trembling against love. _Sylvan_. Woman again!--How, knowing you, I failed So long to know the truth, I cannot think. _Francis_. And what's the truth? _Sylvan_. Woman and love of her Is as a dragging ivy on the growth Of that strong tree, man's nature! _Valentine_. Yes. But now Tell us a simpler sort of truth. Was she--- _Sylvan_. She? Who? _Valentine_. Katrina, of course: who else, when one Speaks of a she to you? _Sylvan_. And what about her? _Valentine_. Was she too cruel to you, or too kind? _Sylvan_. Ah, there's no hope for men like you; you're sunk Above your consciences in smothering ponds Of sweet imagination,--drowned in woman! _Francis_. Ay? Clarence and the Malmesey over again; 'Twas a delightful death. _Valentine_. But you forget. Sylvan, we've come as your disciples here. _Sylvan_. Yes, to a land where not the least desire Need prey upon your mettle. There are hours A god might gladly take in these basking dunes,-- Nothing but summer and piping larks, and air All a warm breath of honey, and a grass All flowers--sweet thyme and golden heart's-ease here! And under scent and song of flowers and birds, Far inland out of the golden bays the air Is charged with briny savour, and whispered news Gentle as whitening oats the breezes stroke. What good is all this health to you? You bring Your own thoughts with you; and they are vinegar, Endlessly rusting what should be clear steel. _Francis_. I do begin to doubt our enterprise, The grand Escape from Woman. It lookt brave And nobly hazardous afar off, to cease All wenching, whether in deed or word or thought. And yet I fear pride egged us. We had done Better to be more humble, and bring here A girl apiece. _Valentine_. Yes, Sylvan; you must think The cloister were a thing more comfortable With your Katrina in it? _Sylvan_. My Katrina! And do you think, supposing I would love, I'ld bank in such a crazy safe as that Katrina? One of those soft shy-spoken maids, Who are only maids through fear? Whose life is all A simpering pretence of modesty? If it was love I wanted, 'twould not be A dish of sweet stewed pears, laced with brandy. But I can do without a woman's kisses. _Valentine_. Can you?--You know full well, in the truth of your heart, That there's no man in all the world of men Whose will woman's beauty cannot divide Easily as a sword cuts jetting water. _Sylvan_. Have you not heard, that even jetting water May have such spouting force, that it becomes A rod of glittering white iron, and swords Will beat rebounding on its speed in vain?-- Of such a force I mean to have my will. [_He sits and stares moodily out to sea. His companions whisper each other_. _Valentine_. Here, Francis! Look you yonder. O but this, This is the joke of the world! _Francis_. Hallo! a girl! And, by the Lord, Katrina!--But why here? _Valentine_. She's followed him, of course; she's heard of this Mad escapade and followed after him. _Francis_. She has not seen us yet. Now what to do? _Valentine_. Quick! Where's your handkerchief? Truss his wrists and ankles, And pull his coat up over his head and leave him! He won't get free of her again; she'll lead His wildness home and keep him tame for ever. Now! [_They fall on him, bind him, and blindfold him_. _Sylvan_. What are you doing? Whatever are you doing? Hell burn you, let me go! _Valentine_. There's worse to come. [_They make off, and leave_ SYLVAN _shouting_. KATRINA _runs in_. _Katrina_. Dear Heaven! Were they robbers? Have they hurt you? [_She releases him. He stands up_. _Sylvan_. Katrina! _Katrina_. Sylvan! _Sylvan_. How did you plot this? I thought I'd put leagues between you and me. _Katrina_. Why have you come here? _Sylvan_. To find you, it seems. But what you're doing here, that I'ld like to know. _Katrina_. I came to see my grandmother: she lives All by herself, poor grannam, and it's time She had some help about the house, and care. _Sylvan_. Let's have a better tale. You followed me. _Katrina_. Sylvan, how dare you make me out so vile? _Sylvan_. How dare you mean to make this body of mine A thing with no thought in it but your beauty? _Katrina_. You shall not speak so wickedly. You've had The half of my truth only: here's the whole. It was from you I fled! I hoped to make My grannam's lonely cottage something safe From you and what I hated in you. _Sylvan_. Love?-- Ah, so it's all useless. _Katrina_. I feared to know You wanted me,--horribly I feared it. And now you've found me out. _Sylvan_. Is this the truth?-- No help for it, then. _Katrina_. O, I'm a liar to you! _Sylvan_. Strange how we grudge to be ruled! rather than be Divinely driven to happiness, we push back And fiercely try for wilful misery.-- Dearest, forgive me being cruel to you, You who are in life like a heavenly dream In the evil sleep of a sinner. _Katrina_. No, you hate me. _Sylvan (kissing her)_. Is this like hatred? _Katrina (in his arms)_. Sylvan, I have been So wrencht and fearfully used. It was as if This being that I live in had become A savage endless water, wild with purpose To tire me out and drown me. _Sylvan_. Yes, I know: Like swimming against a mighty will, that wears The cruelty, the race and scolding spray Of monstrous passionate water. _Katrina_. Hold me, Sylvan I'm bruised with my sore wrestling. _Sylvan_. Ah, but now We are not swimmers in this dangerous life. It cannot beat upon our limbs with surf Of water clencht against us, nor can waves Now wrangle with our breath. Out of it we Are lifted; and henceforward now we are Sailors travelling in a lovely ship, The shining sails of it holding a wind Immortally pleasant, and the malicious sea Smoothed by a keel that cannot come to wreck. _Katrina_. Alas, we must not stay together here. Grannam will come upon us. _Sylvan_. Where is she? _Katrina_. Yonder, gathering driftwood for her fire. There is a little bay not far from here, The shingle of it a thronging city of flies, Feeding on the dead weed that mounds the beach; And the sea hoards there its vain avarice,-- Old flotsam, and decaying trash of ships. An arm of reef half locks it in, and holds The bottom of the bay deep strewn with seaweed, A barn full of the harvesting of storms; And at full tide, the little hampered waves Lift up the litter, so that, against the light, The yellow kelp and bracken of the sea, Held up in ridges of green water, show Like moss in agates. And there is no place In all the coast for wreckage like this bay; There often will my grannam be, a sack Over her shoulders, turning up the crust Of sun-dried weed to find her winter's warmth. _Sylvan_. Is that she coming? _Katrina_. O Sylvan, has she seen us? _Sylvan_. What matter if she has? _Katrina_. But it would matter! _Sylvan_. Katrina, come with me now! We'll go together Back to my house. _Katrina_. No, no, not now! I must Carry my grannam's load for her: 'tis heavy. _Sylvan_. We must not part again. _Katrina_. No, not for long; For if we do, there will be storms again, I know; and a fierce reluctance--O, a mad Tormenting thing!--will shake me. _Sylvan_. Then come now! _Katrina_. Not now, not now! Look how my poor grannam Shuffles under the weight; she's old for burdens. I must carry her sack for her. _Sylvan_. Well, to-night! _Katrina_. To-night?--O Sylvan! dare I? _Sylvan_. Yes, you dare! You will be knowing I'm outside in the darkness, And you will come down here and give me yourself Wholly and forever. _Katrina_. O not to-night! _Sylvan_. I shall be here, Katrina, waiting for you. [_He goes_. _The old woman comes in burdened with her sack_. _Grandmother_. Katrina, that was a young man with you. _Katrina_. O grannam, you've had luck to-day; but now It's I must be the porter. _Grandmother (giving up the sack)_. Ay, you take it. It's sore upon my back. You should have care Of these young fellows; there's a devil in them. Never you talk with a man on the seashore Or on hill-tops or in woods and suchlike places, Especially if he's one you think of marrying. _Katrina_. Marrying? I shall never be married! _Grandmother_. Pooh! That's nonsense. _Katrina_. I should think 'twas horrible Even to be in love and wanting to give Yourself to another; but to be married too, A man holding the very heart of you,-- _Grandmother_. He never does, honey, he never does.-- We're late; come along home. II _In_ SYLVAN'S _house_. SYLVAN _and_ KATRINA _talking to each other and betweenwhiles thinking to themselves_. _Sylvan_. How pleasant and beautiful it is to be At last obedient to love! (_To know Also, I've sold myself,--is that so pleasant_?) _Katrina_. I cannot think, why such a glorious wealth As this of love on our hearts should be spent. What have we done, that all this gain be ours? (_Nor can I think why my life should be mixt, Even its dearest secrecy, with another_.) _Sylvan_. Ay, there's the marvel! If to enter life Needed some courage, 'twere a kind of wages, As they let sacking soldiers take home loot: But we are shuffled into life like puppets Emptied out of a showman's bag; and then Made spenders of the joys current in heaven! (_Not such a marvel neither, if this love Be but the price I'm paid for my free soul. Who's the old trader that has lent this girl The glittering cash of pleasure to pay me with? Who is it,--the world, or the devil, or God--that wants To buy me from myself?_) _Katrina_. And then how vain To think we can hold back from being enricht! It is not only offered-- _Sylvan_. No, 'tis a need As irresistible within our hearts As body's need of breathing. (_That I should be So avaricious of his gleaming price!_) _Katrina_. And the instant force it has upon us, when We think to use love as a privilege! We are like bees that, having fed all day On mountain-heather, go to a tumbling stream To please their little honey-heated thirsts; And soon as they have toucht the singing relief, The swiftness of the water seizes them. _Sylvan_. And onward, sprawling and spinning, they are carried Down to a drowning pool. _Katrina_. O Sylvan, drowning? (_Deeper than drowning! Why should it not be Our hearts need wish only what they delight in_?) _Sylvan_. Well, altogether gript by the being of love. (_Yes, now the bargain's done; and I may wear, Like a cheated savage, scarlet dyes and strings Of beaded glass, all the pleasure of love_!) _Katrina_. It is a wonderful tyranny, that life Has no choice but to be delighted love! (_I know what I must do: I am to abase My heart utterly, and have nothing in me That dare take pleasure beyond serving love. Thus only shall I bear it; and perhaps-- Might I even of my abasement make A passion, fearfully enjoying it_?) _Sylvan_. You are full of thoughts, sweetheart? _Katrina_. And so are you: A long while since you kist me! (_What have I said? O fool so to remind him! I shall scarce Help crying out or shuddering this time!-- Ah no; I am again a fool! Not thus I am to do, but in my heart to break All the reluctance; it must have on me No pleasure; else I am endlessly tortured_.) Then I must kiss you, Sylvan! [_She kisses him_. _Sylvan_. Ah, my darling! (_God! it went through my flesh as thrilling sound Must shake a fiddle when the strings are snatcht! Will she make the life in me all a slave Of my kist body,--a trembling, eager slave? It ran like a terror to my heart, the sense, The shivering delight upon my skin, Of her lips touching me_.) My beloved,-- It may be it were wise, that we took care Our pleasant love come never in the risk Of being too much known. _Katrina_. O what a risk To think of here! Love is not common life, But always fresh and sweet. Can this grow stale? [_She kisses him again_. _Sylvan_. O never! I meant not so.--Yes, always sweet! (_She must not kiss me! Ah, it leaves my heart Aghast, and stopt with pain of the joy of her; And her loved body is like an agony Clinging upon me. O she must not kiss me! I will not be a thing excruciated To please her passion, an anguish of delight!_) PART III VIRGINITY AND PERFECTION JUDITH I THE BESIEGED CITY OF BETHULIA JUDITH (_at the window of an upper room of her house_). This pitiable city!--But, O God, Strengthen me that I bend not into scorn Of all this desperate folk; for I am weak With pitying their lamentable souls. Ah, when I hear the grief wail'd in the streets, And the same breath their tears nigh strangle, used To brag the God in them inviolate And fighting off the hands of the heathen,--Lord, Pardon me that I come so near to scorn; Pardon me, soul of mine, that I have loosed The rigour of my mind and leant towards scorn!-- Friends, wives and husbands, sons and daughters, dead Of plague, famine, and arrows: and the houses Battered unsafe by cannonades of stone Hurled in by the Assyrians: the town-walls Crumbling out of their masonry into mounds Of foolish earth, so smitten by the rams: The hunger-pangs, the thirst like swallowed lime Forcing them gulp green water maggot-quick That lurks in corners of dried cisterns: yea, Murders done for a drink of blood, and flesh Sodden of infants: and no hope alive Of rescue from this heat of prisoning anguish Until Assyrian swords drown it in death;-- These, and abandoned words like these, I hear Daylong shrill'd and groan'd in the lanes beneath. What needeth Holofernes more? The Jews, The People of God, the Jews, lament their fortune; Their souls are violated by the world; Jewry is conquered; and the crop of men Sown for the barns of God, is withered down, Like feeblest grass flat-trodden by the sun, In one short season of fear. Yea, swords and fire Can do no more destruction on this folk: A fierce untimely mowing now befits This corn incapable of sacred bread, This field unprofitable but to flame! What should the choice of God do for a people, But give them souls of temper to withstand The trying of the furnace of the world?-- And they are molten, and from God's device Unfashion'd, crazed in dismay; yea, God's skill Fails in them, as the skill a founder put In brass fails when the coals seize on his work. For this fierce Holofernes and his power, This torture poured on the city, is no more Than a wild gust of wicked heat breathed out Against our God-wrought souls by the world's furnace. No new thing, this camp about the city: Nebuchadnezzar and his hosted men But fearfully image, like a madman's dream, The fierce infection of the world, that waits To soil the clean health of the soul and mix Stooping decay into its upward nature. Soul in the world is all besieged: for first The dangerous body doth desire it; And many subtle captains of the mind Secretly wish against its fortune; next, Circle on circle of lascivious world Lust round the foreign purity of soul For chance or violence to ravish it. But the pure in the world are mastery. Divinely do I know, when life is clean, How like a noble shape of golden glass The passions of the body, powers of the mind, Chalice the sweet immortal wine of soul, That, as a purple fragrance dwells in air From vintage poured, fills the corrupting world With its own savour. And here I am alone Sound in my sweetness, incorrupt; the rest (They noise it unashamed) are stuff gone sour; The world has meddled with them. They have broacht The wine that had pleas'd God to flocking thirst Of flies and wasps, to fears and worldly sorrows. Nay, they are poured out into the dung of the world, And drench, pollute, the fortune of their state, When they should have no fortune but themselves And the God in them, and be sealed therein. Ah, my sweet soul, that knoweth its own sweetness, Where only love may drink, and only--alas!-- The ghost of love. But I am sweet for him, For him and God, and for my sacred self! But hark, a troop of new woe comes this way, Making the street to ring and the stones wet With cried despair and brackish agony. CITIZENS _lamenting in the street below_. They have crawled back like beasts dying of thirst, The life all clotted in them. They went out Soldiers, and back like beaten dogs they came Breathing in whines, slow maimed four-footed things On hands and knees degraded, groaning steps. Their brains were full of battle, they were made Of virtue, brave men; now in their brains shudder Minds that cringe like children burnt with fever. Often they stood to face the enemies' ranks All upright as a flame in windless air, Wearing their arm and the bright skill of swords Like spirits clad in flashing fire of heaven; And now in darken'd rooms they lie afraid And whimper if the nurse moves suddenly.-- Ah God, that such an irresistible fiend, Pain, in the beautiful housing of man's flesh Should sleep, light as a leopard in its hunger, Beside the heavenly soul; and at a wound Leap up to mangle her, the senses' guest!-- That in God's country heathen men should do This worse than murder on men full of God! _Judith_. What matter of new wailing do your tongues Wear in this shivering misery of sound? _A Citizen_. The captains which were chosen to go out And treat with Holofernes have come back. _Judith_. And did the Ninevite demon treat with them? _A Citizen_. The words they had from him were flaying knives, And burning splinters fixt in their skinless flesh, And stones thrown till their breasts were broken in. _Judith_. What, torture our embassage? _A Citizen_. Yea, for he means Nothing but death to all the Jews he takes. _Another_. There was a jeering word tied round the neck Of each tormented man: "Behold, ye Jews, These chiefs of yours have learnt to crawl in prayer Before the god Nebuchadnezzar; come, Leave your city of thirst and your weak god, And learn good worship even as these have learnt." _Another_. I saw them coming in: O horrible! With broken limbs creeping along the ground-- _Judith_. Were I a man among you, I would not stay Behind the walls to weep this insolence; I'ld take a sword in my hand and God in my mind, And seek under the friendship of the night That tent where Holofernes' crimes and hate Sleep in his devilish brain. _A Citizen_. There is no night Where Holofernes sleeps, as thou couldst tell. Didst thou not shut thyself up in thine ease Away from the noise and tears of common woe. Come to the walls this evening, and I'll show thee The golden place of light, the little world Of triumphing glory framed in midst of the dark, Pillar'd on four great bonfires fed with spice, Enclosing in a globe of flame the tent Wherein the sleepless lusts of Holofernes Madden themselves all night, a revel-rout Of naked girls luring him as he lies Filling his blood with wine, the scented air Injur'd marvellously with piping shrills Of lechery made music, and small drums That with a dancing throb drive his swell'd heart Into desires beyond the strength of man. _Judith_. And this beast is thine enemy, God! _Another Citizen_. Nor beast, Nor man, but one of those lascivious gods Our lonely God detests, Chemosh or Baal Or Peor who goes whoring among women. _Another_. And now come down braving in God's own land, Pitching the glory of his fearful heaven All night among God's hills. _Judith_. You fools, he is A life our God could snap as a woman snaps Thread of her sewing. _A Citizen_. Who shall break him off, Who on the earth, from his huge twisted power? _Another_. For in his brain, as in a burning-glass Wide glow of sun drawn to a pin of fire, Are gathered into incredible fierceness all The rays of the dark heat of heathen strength. _Another_. His eyes, they say, can kill a man. _Another_. And sure No murder could approach his naming nights. _Another_. Unless it came as a woman at whose beauty His lust hath never sipt; for into his flesh To drink unknown desirable limbs as wine Torments him still, like a thirst when fever pours A man's life out in drenching sweats. _Judith_. Peace, peace; The siege hath given you shameless tongues, and minds No more your own: yea, the foul Ninevite Hath mastered you already, for your thoughts Dwell in his wickedness and marvel at it. Hate not a thing too much, lest you be drawn Wry from yourselves and close to the thing ye hate. _A Citizen_. We know thy wisdom, Judith; but our lives Belong to death; and wisdom to a man Dying, is water in a broken jar. _Judith_. Yea, if thou wilt die of a parching mouth. _A Citizen_. Thou art rich, and thou hast much cool store of wine. But the town thirsts, and every beat of our blood Hastens us on to maniac agony. The Assyrians have our wells, and half the tanks Are dry, and the pools shoal with baking mud: The water left to us is pestilent. And therefore have we asked the governors For death: and it is granted us. _Another_. Five days Hath Prince Ozias bidden us endure. _Another_. For there are still fools among us who dare trust God has not made a bargain of our lives. _Another_. We are a small people, and our war is weak: Who knows whether our God doth not desire Armies and great plains full of spears and horses, And cities made of bronze and hewn white stone And scarlet awnings, throng'd with sworded men, To shout his name up from the earth and kill All crying at the gates of other heavens; And hath grown tired of peaceable praise and folk That in a warren of dry mountains dwell, Whose few throats can make little noise in heaven. _A Young Man_. For sure God's love hath wandered to strange nations; His pleasure in the breasts of Jerusalem Is a delight grown old. Yea, he would change That shepherd-woman of the earthly cities, Whose mind is as the clear light of her hills, Full of the sound of a hundred waters falling; And poureth his desire out, belike, Upon that queen the wealth of the world hath clad, Babylon, for whose golden bed the gods Wrangle like young men with great gifts and boasts; Whose mind is as a carbuncle of fire, Full of the sound of amazing flames of music. _Another_. Yea, what can Israel offer against her, Whom the rich earth out of her mines hath shod, And crowned with emeralds grown in secret rocks, Who on her shoulders wears the gleam of the sea's Purple and pearls, and the flax of Indian ground Is linen on her limbs cool as moonlight, And fells of golden beasts cover her throne; Whose passion moves in her thought as in the air Melody moves of flutes and silver horns: What can Jerusalem the hill-city Offer to keep God's love from Babylon? _Judith_. What but the beauty of holiness, and sound Of music made by hearts adoring God? You that speak lewdly of God, you yet shall see Jerusalem treading upon her foes. But what was that of five days one of you spoke? _A Citizen_. Ozias sware an oath: hast thou not heard? _Judith_. No, for I keep my mind away from your tongues Wisely. Who walks in wind-blown dust of streets, That hath a garden where the roses breathe? _A Citizen_. I have no garden where the roses breathe; I have a city full of women crying And babies starving and men weak with thirst Who fight each other for a dole of water. _Another_. Not only thou hast pleasant garden-hours, Judith, here in Bethulia; the Lord Death Has bought the city for his garden-close, And saunters in it watching the souls bloom Out of their buds of flesh, and with delight Smelling their agony. _Another_. But in five days Either our God will turn his mind to us, Or, if he careth not for us nor his honour, Ozias will let open the main gate And let the Assyrians end our dreadful lives. _Judith_. O I belong to a nation utterly lost! God! thou hast no tribe on the earth; thy folk Are helpless in the living places like The ghosts that grieve in the winds under the earth. Remember now thy glory among the living, And let the beauty of thy renown endure In a firm people knitted like the stone Of hills, no mischief harms of frost or fire; But now dust in a gale of fear they are. They have blasphemed thee; but forgive them, God; And let my life inhabit to its end The spirit of a people built to God.-- So you have given God five days to come And help you? You would make your souls as wares Merchants hold up to bidders, and say, "God, Pay us our price of comfort, or we sell To death for the same coin"? Five days God hath To find the cost of Jewry, or death buys you? _A Citizen_. Here comes Ozias: ask him. _Judith_. Hold him there. [JUDITH _comes down into the street_. _Ozias_. Judith, I came to speak with thee. _Judith_. And I Would speak with thee. What tale is this they tell That thou hast sworn to give this people death? _Ozias_. In five days those among us who still live Will have no souls but the fierce anguish of thirst. If God ere then relieves us, well. If not, We give ourselves away from God to death. _Judith_. Darest thou do this wickedness, and set Conditions to the mercy of our God? _Ozias_. Death hath a mercy equal unto God's.-- Look at the air above thee; is there sign Of mercy in that naked splendour of fire? Too Godlike! We are his: he covers us With golden flame of air and firmament Of white-hot gold, marvellous to see. But whom, what heathen land hated of God, Do his grey clouds shadow with comfort of rain? Over our chosen heads his glory glows: And in five days the torment in his city Will be beyond imagining. We will go Through swords into the quiet and cloud of death. _Judith_. Ozias, wilt thou be an infamy? Bethulia fallen, all Judea lies Open to the feet and hoofs of Assyria. _Ozias_. Yea, and what doth Judea but cower down Behind us? There's no rescue comes from there. We are alone with Holofernes' power. _Judith_. But if we hold him off, will he not grant The meed of a brave fight, captivity?-- Or we may treat with him, make terms for yielding. _Ozias_. We know his mind: he hath written it plain In the torn flesh of our ambassadors. His mind to us is death; we can but choose Between sharp swords and the slow slaying of thirst. _Judith_. He may torment us if we yield. _Ozias_. He may. But not to yield is grisly and sure torment. _Judith_. There must be hope, if we could reckon right! _Ozias_. Well, thou and God have five days more to build A bridge of hope over our broken world. And, for the town even now fearfully aches In scalding thirst, not five days had I granted, Had it not been for somewhat I must say Secretly to thee. _Judith_. Secretly? Then here; Send off these men to labour at their groans Elsewhere; for not within my house thou comest; I'll have no thoughts against God in my house. [OZIAS _disperses the citizens_. _Ozias_. Judith, we are two upright minds in this Herd of grovelling cowardice. We should, To spiritual vision which can see Stature of spirit, seem to stand in our folk Like two unaltered stanchions in the heap Of a house pulled down by fire. I know thy soul Tempered by trust in God against this ruin; But not in God, but in mortality Thy soul stands founded; and death even now Is digging at thy station in the world; And as a man with ropes and windlasses Pulls for new building columns of wreckt halls Down with a breaking fall, so death has rigged His skill about us, so he will break us down, Ruin our height and courage; and as stone, Carved with the beautiful pride of kings, hath made, Hammer'd to rubble and ground for mortar, walls Of farms and byres, our kill'd and broken natures, With all their beauty of passion, yea, and delight In God, death will shape and grind up to new Housing for souls not royal as we are, New flesh and mind for mean souls and dull hearts: For death is only life destroying life To roof the coming swarms in mortal shelter Of flesh and mind experienced in joy. _Judith_. Thy specious prologue means no good, I trow. Thou wert to tell me wherefore for five days We may pretend to be God's people still; Why thou didst not make us over to death Soon as the folk began to wail despair. _Ozias_. This reasoning will tell thee why.--No need, I think, to bring up into speech the years Since in the barley-field Manasses lay Shot by the sun. I tried (nor failed, I think), To hold thy soul up from its hurt, and be Somewhat of sight to thee, until thy long Blind season of disaster should be changed. Always I have found friendship in thine eyes; And pleasant words, and silences more pleasant, Have made us moments wherein all the world Left our sequester'd minds; so that I dared Often believe our friendliness might be The brink of love. _Judith_. Stop! for thou hast enough Disgraced mine ears. _Ozias_. I pray thee hear me out. The dream of loving thee and being loved Hath been my life; yea, with it I have kept My heart drugg'd in a long delicious night Colour'd with candles of imagined sense, And musical with dreamt desire. I said, The day will surely come upon the world, To scatter this sweet night of fantasy With morning, pour'd on my dream-feasted heart Out of thine eyes, Judith. And yet I still Feared for my dream, even as a maiden fears The body of her lover. But, in the midst Of all this charm'd delaying,--behold Death Leapt into our world, lording it, standing huge In front of the future, looking at us! Thou seest now why, when the people came Crying wildly to be given up to death, I bade them wait five days?--That I at last Might stamp the image of my glorious dream Upon the world, even though it be wax And the fires are kindling that must melt it out. Judith, thou hast now five days more to live This life of beautiful passion and sweet sense: And now my love comes to thee like an angel To call thee out of thy visionary love For lost Manasses, out of ghostly desire And shadows of dreams housing thy soul, that are Vainer than mine were, dreams of dear things which death Hath for ever broken; and lead thy life To a brief shadowless place, into an hour Made splendid to affront the coming night By passion over sense more grandly burning Than purple lightning over golden corn, When all the distance of the night resounds With the approach of wind and terrible rain, That march to torment it down to the ground. Judith, shall we not thus together make Death admirable, yea, and triumph through The gates of anguish with a prouder song Than ever lifted a king's heart, who rode Back from his war, with nations whipt before him, Into trumpeting Nineveh? _Judith_. Thou fool, Death is nothing to me, and life is all. But what foul wrong have I done to thee, Ozias, That thou shouldst go about to put such wrong Into my life as these defiling words? _Ozias_. Is it defilement to hear love spoken? _Judith_. Yes! thou hast soiled me: to know my beauty, Wherewith I loved Manasses, and still love, Has all these years dwelt in thy heart a dream Of favourite lust,--O this is foul in my mind. _Ozias_. I meant not what thou callest lust, but love. _Judith_. What matters that? Thou hast desired me. And knowing that, I feel my beauty clutch About my soul with a more wicked shame Than if I lived corrupt with leprosy. _Ozias_. Wilt thou still let the dead have claim on thee? Judith, wilt thou be married to a grave? _Judith_. I am married to my love; and it is vile, Yea, it is burning in me like a sin, That when my love was absent, thy desire Shouldst trespass where my love is single lord. _Ozias_. This is but superstition. Love belongs To living souls. It is a light that kills Shadows and ghosts haunting about the mind. Yea, even now when death glooms so immense Over the heaven of our being, Love Would keep us white with day amid the dark Down-coming of the storm, till the end took us. And joy is never wasted. If we love, Then although death shall break and bray our flesh, The joy of love that thrilled in it shall fly Past his destruction, subtle as fragrance, strong And uncontrollable as fire, to dwell In the careering onward of man's life, Increasing it with passion and with sweetness. Duty is on us therefore that we love And be loved. Wert thou made to set alight Such splendour of desire in man, and yet, For a grave's sake, keep all thy beauty null, And nothing be of good nor help to thy kind? _Judith_. Help? What help in me? _Ozias_. To let go forth The joy whereof thy beauty is the sign Into the mind of man, and be therein Courage of golden music and loud light Against his enemies, the eternal dark And silence. _Judith_. Ah, not thus. Yet--could I not help?-- Why talk we? What thing should I say to thee To pierce the pride of lust wrapping thy heart? How show thee that, as in maidens unloved There is virginity to make their sex Shrink like a wound from eyes of love untimely, So in a woman who hath learnt herself By her own beauty sacred in the clasp Of him whom her desire hath sacred made, There is a fiercer and more virgin wrath Against all eyes that come desiring her? [_A Psalm of many voices strikes their ears, and through the street pass old men chanting, followed and answered by a troop of young men_. _Chorus: Old Men_. Wilt thou not examine our hearts, O Lord God of our strength? Wilt thou still be blindly trying us? Wilt thou not at length Believe the crying of our words, that never our knees have bent To foreign gods, nor any Jewish mouth or brain hath sent Prayers to beseech the favour of abominable thrones Worshipt by the heathen men with furnaces, wounds, and groans? _Young Men_. And what good in our lives, strength or delighted glee, Hath God paid to purchase our purity? Though lust starve in our flesh, still he devises fire To prove our lives pure as his fierce desire. With huge heathenish tribes roaring exultant here, Jewry fights as maid with a ravisher: Tribes who better than we deal with the gods their lords, For they pleasantly sin, yet the gods sharpen and drive their swords. _Old Men_. Hast thou not tried us enough, Jehovah? Hast thou found any fire Will draw from our hearts a smoke of burn'd idolatrous desire? There is none in us, Lord: no other God in us but thee; Only thy fires make our clean souls glitter with agony. Pure we are, pure in our prayers, pure our souls look to thee, Lord; And to be shewn to the world devoured by evil is our reward. _Young Men_. We whose hearts were alone giving our God renown, Under the wheels of hell we are fallen down! False the heaven we built, fashion'd of purity; 'Tis heathen heavens, made out of sin, stand high. Come, make much of our God! Comfort his ears with song, Lest his pride the gods with their laughter wrong, Seeing, huddled as beasts held by a fearful night Full of lions and hunger, his folk crouch to the heathen might. _Old Men_. Jehovah, still we refrain from crying to the infamous gates That open easily into the heavens thy mind of jealousy hates. Power is in them: hast thou no power? Wilt thou not beware Lest thy mood now press our minds to venturous despair? _Young Men_. Fool'd, fool'd, fool'd are our lives, held by the world in jeer; With crazed eyes we behold veils of enormous fear Hiding dreadfully those marvellous gates and stairs Where the heathen delighted with sin throng with their prosperous prayers. _Old Men_. Yea, hung like the front of pestilent winds, thunderous dark before The way into the heathen heavens, terrible curtains pour, Webs of black imagination and woven frenzy of sin; And yet we know power on earth belongs to those within. _Young Men_. Yea, through Jehovah's jealousy, Burning dimly at last we see The great brass made like rigid flame, The gates of the heavens we dare not name. Take hold of wickedness! Yea, have heart To tear the darkness of sin apart; And find, beyond, our comforted sight Flash full of a glee of fiery light,-- The gods the heathen know through sin, The gods who give them the world to win! _Judith_. This may I not escape. My world hath need Of me who still hold God firm in my mind. It is no matter if I fail: I must Send the God in me forth, and yield to him The shaping of whatever chance befall.-- Ozias! hateful thou hast made thyself To me; for thou hast hatefully soiled my beauty, My preciousest, given me to attire my soul For her long marriage festival of life. Yet I must make request to thee, and thou Must grant it. When the sun is down to-night, Quietly set the main gate open: I Will pass therethrough and treat with Holofernes. _Ozias_. What, wilt thou go to be murdered by these fiends? _Judith_. Ask nothing, but do simply my request. _Ozias_. I will: so thou shalt know the reverent heart I have for thee, although its worship thou So bitterly despisest; but thy will Shall be a sacred thing for me to serve. Thou hast thy dangerous demand, because It is thou who askest, it is I who may Grant it to thee,--this only! Yea, I will send Thy heedless body among risks that thou, Looking alone at the great shining God Within thy mind, seest not; but I see And sicken at them. Yet do I not require Thy purpose; whether thy proud heart must have The wound of death from steel that has not toucht The peevish misery these Jews call blood; Whether thy mind is for velvet slavery In the desires of some Assyrian lord-- Forgive me, Judith! there my love spoke, made Foolish with injury; and I should be Unwise to stay here, lest it break the hold I have it in. I go, and I am humbled. But thou shalt have thy asking: the gate is thine. [_He goes_. _Judith_. How can it harm me more, to feel my beauty Read by man's eyes to mean his lust set forth? Yea, Holofernes now can bring no shame Upon me that Ozias hath not brought. But this is chief: what balance can there be In my own hurt against a nation's pining? God hath given me beauty, and I may Snare with it him whose trap now bites my folk. There is naught else to think of. Let me go And set those robes in order which best pleased Manasses' living eyes; and let me fill My gown with jewels, such as kindle sight, And have some stinging sweetness in my hair.-- Manasses, my Manasses, lost to me, Gone where my love can nothing search, and hidden Behind the vapours of these worldly years, The many years between me and thy death; Thine ears are sealed with immortal blessedness Against our miserable din of living; Through thy pure sense goeth no soil of grief. Forgive me! for thou hast left me here to be hurt And moved to pity by the dolour of men. The garment of my soul is splasht with sorrow, Sorrowful noise and sight; and like to fires Of venom spat on me, the sorrow eats Through the thin robe of sense into my soul. And it is cried against me, this keen anguish, By my own people and my God's;--and thou Didst love them. Therefore thou must needs forgive me, That I devise how this my beauty, this Sacred to thy long-dead joy of desire, May turn to weapon in the hand of God; Such weapon as he hath taken aforetime To sword whole nations at a stroke to their knees,-- Storms of the air and hilted fire from heaven, And sightless edge of pestilence hugely swung Down on the bulk of armies in the night. Such weapon in God's hand, and wielded so, A woman's beauty may be now, I pray; A pestilence suddenly in this foreign blood, A blight on the vast growth of Assyrian weed, A knife to the stem of its main root, the heart Of Holofernes. God! Let me hew him down, And out of the ground of Israel wither our plague! II BEFORE THE TENT OF HOLOFERNES _Holofernes_. Night and her admirable stars again! And I again envying her and questioning! What hast thou, Night, achieved, denied to me, That maketh thee so full of quiet stars? What beauty has been mingled into thee So that thy depth burns with the peace of stars?-- I now with fires of uproarious heat, Exclaiming yellow flames and towering splendour And a huge fragrant smoke of precious woods, Must build against thy overlooking, Stars, And against thy terrible eternal news Of Beauty that burns quietly and pure, A lodge of wild extravagant earthly fire; Even as under passions of fleshly pleasure I hide myself from my desiring soul. [_Enter Guards with_ JUDITH. _Guard_ 1. We found this woman wandering in the trenches, And calling out, "Take me to Holofernes, Assyrians, I am come for Holofernes." _Guard_ 2. She would not, for no words of ours, unveil, And something held us back from handling her. _Guard_ 1. We think she must be beautiful, although She is so stubborn with that veil of hers. _Guard_ 2. We minded my lord's word, that he be shewn All the seized women which are strangely fair. _Holofernes_. Take off thy veil. _Judith_. I will not. _Holofernes_. Take thy veil From off thy face, Jewess, or thou straight goest To entertain my soldiers. _Judith_. I will not. _Holofernes_. Am I to tear it, then? _Judith_. My lord, thou durst not. _Holofernes_. Ha, there is spirit here. I have the whim, Jewess, almost to believe thee: I dare not! But tell me who thou art. _Judith_. That shalt thou know Before the night has end. _Holofernes_. Take off thy veil. _Judith_. Alone for Holofernes am I come. _Holofernes_. And there is only Holofernes here. These fellows are but thoughts of mine; my whole Army, that treads down all the earth and breaks The banks of fending rivers into marsh, Is nought but my forth-going imagination. Where I am, there is no man else: if I Appeared before thee in a throng of spears, I'ld stand alone before thee, girt about By powers of my mind made visible. _Judith_. For captured peasants or for captured kings Such words would have the right big sound. But I Am woman, and I hear them not: I say I will not, before any man but thee, Make known my face; I am only for thee. When I have thee alone and in thy tent I will unveil. _Holofernes (to the Guards)_. What! Staring?--Hence, you dogs! III IN THE TENT OF HOLOFERNES _Holofernes (alone with Judith)_. Thou art the woman! Thou hast come to me!-- O not as I thought! not with senses blazing Far into my deep soul abiding calm Within their glory of knowledge, as the vast Of night behind her outward sense of stars. Now am I but the place thy beauty brightens, And of myself I have no light of sense Nor certainty of being: I am made Empty of all my wont of life before thee, A vessel where thy splendour may be poured, After the way the great vessel of air Accepts the morning power of the sun. Now nothing I have known of me remains, Save that, within me, far as the world is high Beneath this dawn that gilds my spirit's air, Some depth, more inward even than my soul, Troubles and flashes like the shining sea. O Jewish woman, if thou knewest all The hunger and the tears the punisht world Suffers by cause of thee, and of my dream That thou wert somewhere hidden in mankind! I could not but obey my dream, and toil To break the nations and to sift them fine, Pounding them with my warfare into dust, And searching with my many iron hands Through their destruction as through crumbs of marl, Until my palms should know the jewel-stone Betwixt them, the Woman who is Beauty,-- Nature so long hath like a miser kept Buried away from me in this heap of Jews! Now that we twain might meet, women and men In every land where I have felt for thee Have taken desolation for their home, Crying against me,--and against thee unknowing. Ah, but I had given over to despair The mind in me, I ground the stubborn tribes, I quarried them like rocks and broke them small And ground them down to flinders and to sands; But never gleamed the jewel-stone therein, Naught but the common flint of earth I found. And in a dreary anger I kept on Assailing the whole kind of man, because Some manner of war my soul must needs inhabit. Like a man making himself in drunken sleep A king, my soul, drunk with its earthly war, Kept idle all its terrible want of thee, Believed itself managing arms with God; Yea, when my trampling hurry through the earth Made cloudy wind of the light human dust, I thought myself to move in the dark danger Of blinding God's own face with blasts of war! Until my rage forgot his crime against me, His hiding thee, the beauty I had dreamt. Yea and I filled my flesh with furious pleasure, That in the noise of it my soul should hear No whispering thought of desperate desire. Nevertheless, I knew well that my heart's Sightless imagination lifted his face Continually awake for news of thee. But 'twas infirm and crazy waking, like As when a starving sentry, put to guard The sleep of a broken soldiery that flees Through winter of wild hills from hounding foes, Hath but the pain of frozen wounds, and fear Feeding on his dark spirit, to watch withal. And lo, As suddenly, as blessedly thou comest Now to my heart's unseeing watch for thee, As out of the night behind him into the heart, Drugg'd senseless with its ache, of that lost soldier An arrow leaps, and ere the stab can hurt, His frozen waking is the ease of death. So I am killed by thee; all the loud pain Of pleasure that had lockt my heart in life, Wherein with blinded and unhearing face My hope of thee yet stood and strained to look And listen for thy coming,--all this life Is killed before thee; yea, like marvellous death, Spiritual sense invests my heart's desire; And round the quiet and content thereof, The striving hunger of my fleshly sense Fails like a web of hanging cloth in fire.-- Tell me now, if thou knowest, why thou hast come! _Judith_. Sufficeth not for us that I have come?-- Let not unseemly things live in my mouth; Yet I would praise thee as thou praisest me, But in a manner that my people use, Things to approach in song they list not speak. And song, thou knowest, inwrought with chiming strings, Sweetens with sweet delay loving desire: Also thine eyes will feed, and thy heart wonder.-- Balkis was in her marble town, And shadow over the world came down. Whiteness of walls, towers and piers, That all day dazzled eyes to tears, Turned from being white-golden flame, And like the deep-sea blue became. Balkis into her garden went; Her spirit was in discontent Like a torch in restless air. Joylessly she wandered there, And saw her city's azure white Lying under the great night, Beautiful as the memory Of a worshipping world would be In the mind of a god, in the hour When he must kill his outward power; And, coming to a pool where trees Grew in double greeneries, Saw herself, as she went by The water, walking beautifully, And saw the stars shine in the glance Of her eyes, and her own fair countenance Passing, pale and wonderful, Across the night that filled the pool. And cruel was the grief that played With the queen's spirit; and she said: "What do I hear, reigning alone? For to be unloved is to be alone. There is no man in all my land Dare my longing understand; The whole folk like a peasant bows Lest its look should meet my brows And be harmed by this beauty of mine. I burn their brains as I were sign Of God's beautiful anger sent To master them with punishment Of beauty that must pour distress On hearts grown dark with ugliness. But it is I am the punisht one. Is there no man, is there none, In whom my beauty will but move The lust of a delighted love; In whom some spirit of God so thrives That we may wed our lonely lives? Is there no man, is there none?"-- She said, "I will go to Solomon." _Holofernes_. I shall not bear it: dreamed, it hath made my life Fail almost, like a storm broken in heaven By its internal fire; and now I feel Love like a dreadful god coming to do His pleasure on me, to tear me with his joy And shred my flesh-wove strength with merciless Utterance through me of inhuman bliss.-- I must have more divinity within me.-- Come to me, slave! [_Calling out to his attendants_. _Judith_. Thou callest someone? Alas! O, where's my veil?--Cry him to stay awhile!-- _Holofernes_. Thou troubled with such whimsy!--But 'tis no one, A mere sexless thing of mine. _Judith_. He is coming! I threw my veil--where?--I must bow my face Close to the ground, or his eyes will find me out; And--O my lord, hold him back with thy voice! [_She has knelt down_. Hold him in doubt to enter a moment, while I loosen my hair into some manner of safety Against his prying. _Holofernes_. Slave, dost thou hear me? Come!-- I marvel, room for such a paltering mood Should be within thy mind, now so nearly Deified with the first sense of my love. [_A Eunuch comes in_. _Holofernes_. Wine! The mightiest wine my sutlers have; Wine with the sun's own grandeur in it, and all The wildness of the earth conceiving Spring From the sun's golden lust: wine for us twain! And when thou hast brought it, burn anear my bed Storax and cassia; and let wealth be found To cover my bed with such strife of colour, Crimson and tawny and purple-inspired gold, That eyes beholding it may take therefrom Splendid imagination of the strife Of love with love's implacable desire. _Judith (still kneeling)_. I must lean on thee now, my God! A weight Of pitiable weakness thou must bear And move as it were thine own strength; tell my heart How not to sicken in abomination, Show me the way to loathe this vile man's rage, Now close to seize me into the use of his pleasure, With the loathing that is terrible delight. So that not fainting, but refresht and astonisht And strangely spirited and divinely angry My body may arise out of its passion, Out of being enjoyed by this fiend's flesh. Then man my arm; then let mine own revenge Utter thy vengeance, Lord, as speech doth meaning; Yea, with hate empower me to say bravely The glittering word that even now thy mind Purposes, God,--the swift stroke of a falchion! _Holofernes_. Woman, beloved, why art thou fixt so long Kneeling and downward crookt, and in thy hair Darkened?--Ah, thy shoulders urging shape Of loveliness into thy hair's pouring gleam! _Judith_. Needs must I pray my Jewish God for help Against my bridal joys. For I do fear them. _Holofernes_. I also: these are the joys that fear doth own. IV _At the Gate of Bethulia. On the walls, on either side of the Gate, are citizens watching the Assyrian camp;_ OZIAS _also, standing by himself_. _Ozias_. When wilt thou cure thyself, spirit of the earth, When wilt thou cure thyself of thy long fever, That so insanely doth ferment in thee?-- 'Tis not man only: the whole blood of life Is fever'd with desire. But as the brain, Being lord of the body, is served by blood So well that a hidden canker in the flesh May send, continuous as a usury, Its breeding venom upward, till in the brain It vapour into enormity of dreaming: So man is lord of life upon the earth; And like a hastening blood his nature wells Up out of the beasts below him, they the flesh And he the brain, they serving him with blood; And blood so loaden with brute lust of being It steams the conscious leisure of man's thought With an immense phantasma of desire, An unsubduable dream of unknown pleasure; Which he sends hungering forth into the world, But never satisfied returns to him. Who hath found beauty? Who hath not desired it? 'Tis but the feverish spirit of earthly life Working deliriously in man, a dream Questing the world that throngs upon man's mind To find therein an image of herself; And there is nothing answers her entreaty.-- I climb towards death: it is not falling down For me to die, but up the event of the world As up a mighty ridge I climb, and look With lifted vision backward down on life. So high towards death I am gone, listless I gaze Where on the earth beneath me, into the fires Of that Assyrian strength, our siege of fate, Judith, the dream of my desire of beauty, Goes daring forth, to shape herself therein, Seeking to fashion in its turbulence Some deed that will be likeness of herself. For now I know her purpose: and I know She will be murdered there. Against the world The beauty I have lived in, my loved dream, Goes, wild to master the world; and she will Therefore be murdered. It is nothing now; Wind from the heights of death is on my brow. _Talk among the other watchers_. It must be, God is for us. Such a mind As this of Judith's could not be, unless God had spoken it into her. She is His special voice, to tell the Assyrians Terrible matters. Is she God's? I think 'Tis Holofernes hath her now. If not, Upon his soldiers he hath lavisht her. Not he. Now they have known her, his filled senses Never will leave go our wonderful Judith. Ay, wonderful in Jewry. But there are In Babylon women so beautiful, They make men's spirits desperate, to know Flesh cannot ever minister enough Delight to ease the craving they are taskt with. Who talks of Babylon when God even now Is training her fierce champion, Holofernes, Into the death a woman holds before him? A woman killing Holofernes! Ay; Be she abused by him or not, I know God means to give her marvellous hands to-night. I know it by my heart so strangely sick With looking out for the first drowsy stir In that huge flaming quiet of the camp. Now fearfuller qualm than famine eagerly Handles my life and pulls at it,--my faith's Hunger for being fed with sounds and visions: The firelight mixt with a trooping bustle of shadows, The silence suddenly shouting with surprise, That tells of men astounded out of sleep To find that God hath dreadfully been among them. We have mistaken Judith. Even as now God is mistaken by your doubting hearts. She that has dealt with such a pride of spirit In all her ways of life, so that she seemed To feel like shadow, falling on the light Her own mind made, the common thoughts of men; Ay, she that to-day came down into our woe And stood among the griefs that buzz upon us, Like one who is forced aside from a bright journey To stoop in a small-room'd cottage, where loud flies Pester the inmates and the windows darken; This she, this Judith, out of her quiet pride, And out of her guarded purity, to walk Where God himself from violent whoredom could Scarcely preserve her shuddering flesh! and all For our sake, for the lives she hath in scorn, This horrible Assyrian risk she ventures. There should be prayer for that. Let us ask God To bind the men, whose greed now glares upon her, In some strange feebleness; surely he will; Surely not with woman's worst injury Her noble obedience he will reward! Let us ask God to bind these men before her. They are not his to bind: else, were they here? They are the glorying of Nebuchadnezzar's Heart of fury against our God, sent here Like insolent shouting into his holy quiet. God could not bind these bragging noises up In Nebuchadnezzar's heart; it is not his, But made by Babylonian gods or owned By thrones that hold the heavens over Nineveh. For all these outland greatnesses, these kings Whose war goes pealing through the world, these towns Infidel and triumphant, reaching forth Armies to hug the world close to their lust,-- What are they but the gods making a scorn Of our God on the earth? Then how can he Alter these men from wicked delight? or how Keep Judith all untoucht among their hands, When his own quietness he could not keep Unbroken by the god's Assyrian insult? But with a thunder he can shatter this Intruding noise, and make his quiet again. And in their lust he can entangle them, Deceiving them far into Judith's beauty, Which is his power, and lop them from their gods. Their outrage will be ornament upon her! Out of the hands of the goblins she will come Not markt with shame, but wearing their vile usage Like one whom earthly reign covers with splendour. The ignominy they thought of shall be turned To shining, yea, to announcing through the world How God hath used her to beguile the heathen. It begins! Now it begins! Lo, how dismay Is fallen on the camp in a strange wind: The ground, that seemed as spread with yellow embers, Leaps into blazing, and like cinders whirled And scattered up among the flames, are black Bands of frantic men flickering about! Ozias! seest thou how our enemies Are labouring in amazement? How they run Flinging fuel to light them against fear? Now they begin to roar their terror: now They wave and beckon wordless desperate things One to another. Hear the iron and brass Ringing above their voices, as they snatch The arms that seem to fight among themselves, Seized by their masters' anguish; dost thou hear The clumsy terror in the camp, the men Hasting to arm themselves against our God, Ozias? _Ozias_. Lions have taken a sentinel. _A Citizen_. Judith hath taken Holofernes. _Judith's voice outside, under the gate_. Yea, And brought him back with her. Open the gates. _The Citizens_. Open the gates. Bring torches. Wake, ye Jews! Hail, Judith, marvellously chosen woman! How bringst thou Holofernes? Show him to us. _Judith_. Dare you indeed behold him? _A Citizen_. Is he bound? _Judith_. Drugged rather, with a medicine that God Prepared for him and gave into my hands. Open the gates! It is a harmless thing, The Holofernes I have made your show; You may gaze blithely upon him. I have tamed The man's pernicious brain. Open the gates! What, are your hands still nerveless? But my hands, The hands of a woman, have done notable work. _The Gates open_. JUDITH _appears, standing against the night and the Assyrian fires. Torches and shouting in the town_. _Citizens_. Judith! Judith alone! Where is thy boast Of Holofernes captured? _Judith_. I am alone, Indeed; and you are many; yet with me Comes Holofernes, certainly a captive. _Ozias_. What trifle is this? _Judith_. Trifle? It is the word. A trifle, a thing of mere weight, I have brought you From the Assyrian camp. My apron here Is loaded now more heavily, but as meanly As an old witch's skirt, when she comes home From seeking camel's-dung for kindling; yet My burden was, an hour ago, the world Where you were ground to tortures; it was the brain Inventing your destruction.--Look you now! [_Holding up the head of_ HOLOFERNES. This is the mouth through which commandment came Of massacre and damnation to the Jews; Here was the mind the gods that hate our God Used to empower the agonies they devised Against us; here your dangers were all made, Your horrible starvation; and the thirst Those wicked gods supposed would murder you, Here a creature became, a ravenous creature; Yea, here those mighty vigours lived which took, Like ocean water taking frost, the hate Those gods have for Jehovah, shaping it Atrociously into the war that clencht Their fury about you, frozen into iron. Jews, here is the head of Holofernes: take it And let it grin upon our highest wall Over against the camp of the Assyrians. [_She throws them the head_. Ay, you may worry it; now is the jackals' time; Snarl on your enemy, now he is dead. _Ozias_. Judith, be not too scornful of their noise. There are no words may turn this deed to song: Praise cannot reach it. Only with such din, Unmeasured yelling exultation, can Astonishment speak of it. In me, just now, Thought was the figure of a god, firm standing, A dignity like carved Egyptian stone; Thou like a blow of fire hast splinter'd it; It is abroad like powder in a wind, Or like heapt shingle in a furious tide, Thou having roused the ungovernable waters My mind is built amidst, a dangerous tower. My spirit therein dwelling, so overwhelmed In joy or fear, disturbance without name, Out of the rivers it is fallen in Can snatch no substance it may shape to words Answerable to thy prowess and thy praise. We are all abasht by thee, and only know To worship thee with shouts and astounded passion. _Judith_. Yes, now the world has got a voice against me: At last now it may howl a triumph about me. _Ozias_. This, nevertheless, my thought can seize from out The wildness that goes pouring past it. God, Wondrously having moved thee to this deed, Hath shown the Jews a wondrous favouring love. Thee it becomes not, standing though thou art On this high action, to think scorn of men Whom God thinks worthy of having thee for saviour. _Judith_. This is a subtle flattery. What know I Of whom God loves, of whom God hates? I know This only: in my home, in my soul's chamber, A filthy verminous beast hath made his lair. I let him in; I let this grim lust in; Not only did not bolt my doors against His forcing, but even put them wide and watcht Him coming in, to make my house his stable. What though I killed him afterward? All my place, And all the air I live in, is foul with him. I killed him? Truly, I am mixt with him; Death must have me before it hath all him. _Ozias_. In thee, too, are the floods, the wild rivers, Overrunning thy thought, the nameless mind? How else, indeed? Nay, we are dull with joy: Of thee we thought not, out of the hands of outrage Coming back, although with victory coming. But this makes surety once more of my thought, And gives again my reason its lost station; For it may come now in my privilege (A thing that could cure madness in my brain) That thou from me persuasion hast to endure What well I know thy soul, thy upright soul, Feels as abominable harness on it Fastening thee unwillingly to crime,-- The wickedness that hath delighted in thee. _Judith_. Ay? Art thou there already? Tasting, art thou, What the Assyrians may have forced on me, Ere thou hast well swallowed thy new freedom? Indeed, I know this is the wine of the feast Which I have set for thee and thy Bethulia; And 'tis the wine makes delicate the banquet. _Ozias_. Wait: listen to me. 'Tis I now must be wise And thou the hearkener. Not without wound (So I make out, at least, thy hurrying words) Comest thou back to us from conquering. And such a wound, I easily believe, As eats into thy soul and rages there; Yea, I that know thee, Judith, know thy soul Worse rankling hath in it from heathen insult Than flesh could take from steel bathed in a venom Art magic brewed over a charcoal fire, Blown into flame by hissing of whipt lizards. Yet is it likely, by too much regarding, Thy hurt is pamper'd in its poisonous sting. Wounds in the spirit need no surgery But a mind strong not to insist on them. See, then, thou hast not too much horror of this; Who that fights well in battle comes home sound?-- Much less couldst thou, who must, with seeming weakness, Invite the power of Holofernes forth Ere striking it, thy womanhood the ambush. For thou didst plan, I guess, to duel him In snares, weaving his greed about his limbs, Drawn out and twisted winding round his strength By ministry of thy enticing beauty; That when he thought himself spending on thee Malicious violence, and thou hadst made him Languish, stupid with boasting and delight, Thy hands might find him a tied quiet victim Under their anger, maiming him of life. Now, thy device accomplisht, wilt thou grudge Its means? Wilt thou scruple to understand Thy abus'd sex will show upon thy fame A nobler colour of glory than a soldier's Wounded bravery rusting his habergeon? Nay, will not the world rejoice, thou being found Among its women, ready such insolence To bear as is unbearable to think on, Thereby to serve and save God and his people? _Judith_. The world rejoice over me? Yea, I am certain. _Ozias_. Then art thou too fastidious. It is weak To make thyself a shame of being injured; And is it injury indeed? Nay, is it Anything but a mere opinion hurt? Not thou, but customary thought is here Molested and annoyed; the only nerve Can carry anguish from this to thy soul, Is that credulity which ties the mind Firmly to notional creature as to real. Advise thee, then; dark in thyself keep hid This grief; and thou wilt shortly find it dying. _A Citizen_. Judith, Pardon our ecstasy. 'Tis time thou hadst Our honour. But first tell us all the event, That in thy proper height thou with thy deed May stand against our worship. _Judith_. Why do you stop Your shouts, and glare upon me? Have you need Truly to hear my tale? I think, not so. Ozias here, as he hath whiled at ease Upon the walls my stay in the camp yonder, Hath fairly fancied all that I have done, And more exactly, and with a relishing gust, All that was done to me. Ask him, therefore; If he hath not already entertained Your tedious leisure with my story told Pat to your liking, enjoyed, and glosst with praise.-- And yet, why ask him? Why go even so far To hear it? Ask but the clever libidinousness Dwelling in each of your hearts, and it will surely Imagine for you how I trained to my arms Lewd Holofernes, and kept him plied with lust, Until his wild blood in the end paused fainting, And he lay twitching, drained of all his wits;-- But there was wine as well working in him, Feebling his sinews; 'twas not all my doing, The snoring fit that came before his death, The routing beastly slumber that was my time. You know it all! Why ask me for the tale? _Ozias_. Comfort her: praise her. She is strangely ashamed Of Holofernes having evilly used her. _A Citizen_. We will contrive the triumph of our joy Into some tune of words, and bring thee on, Accompanied by singing, to thy house. _Judith_. I pray you, rather let me go alone. You will do better to be searching out All sharpen'd steel that may take weapon-use. The Assyrians are afraid: it is your time. [_They surround_ JUDITH _and go with her_. CHORUS _of Citizens praising_ JUDITH _and leading her to her house_. Over us and past us go the years; Like wind that taketh sound from jubilee And aloud flieth ringing, Over us goeth the speed of the years, Like loud noise eternally bringing The greatness women have done. Deborah was great; with her singing She hearten'd the men that the horses had dismayed; Deborah, the wife of Lapidoth, alone Stood singing where the men were horribly afraid, Singing of God in the midst of fear; When archers out of Hazor were Eating the land like grasshoppers, And darkness at noon was plundering the air Of the light of the sun's insulted fires, Red darkness covering Sisera's host As Jewry was covered by the Canaanite's boast: For the earth was broken into dust beneath The force of his chariots' thundering tyres, Nine hundred chariots of iron. Deborah was great in her prophesying; But, though her anger moved through the Israelites, And the loose tribes her indignant crying Bound into song, fashion'd to an army; And before the measure of her song went flying, Like leaves and breakage of the woods Fallen into pouring floods, The iron and the men of Sisera and Jabin; Not by her alone God's punishment was done On Canaan intending a monstrous crime, On the foaming and poison of the serpent in Hazor; Two women were the power of God that time. Yea, and sullenly down Into its hiding town, Even though the lightning were still in its heart, The broken dragon, drawing in its fury, Had croucht to mend its shatter'd malice, Had lifted its head again and spat against God. But God its endlessly devising brain, Its braving spirit, its captain Sisera, Into the hands of another woman brought: In nets of her persuasion She that wild spirit caught, She fasten'd up that uncontrollable thought. Sisera spake, and the crops were flames; Sisera lookt, and blood ran down the door-sills. But weary, trusting his entertainment, He came to Jael, the Kenite woman; A woman who gave him death for a bed, And with base tools nailed down his murderous head Fast to the earth his rage had fed With men unreckonably slain. But than these wonderfully greater, Judith, art thou; The praise of both shall follow like a shadow After thy glory now, Who alone the measureless striding, The high ungovern'd brow, Of Assur upon the hills of the world Hast tript and sent him hugely sliding, Like a shot beast, down from his towering, By his own lamed Mightiness hurl'd To lie a filth in disaster. Deborah and Jael, famously named, Like rich lands enriching the city their master, Bring thee now their most golden honour. For the beauty of thy limbs was found By a dreadfuller enemy dreadful as the sound Of Deborah's singing, though hers was a song That had for its words thousands of men. But thou thyself, looking upon them, Didst weaken the Assyrians mortally. They thought it terrible to see thee coming; They falter'd in their impiousness, Their hearts gave in to thee; they went Backward before thee and shewed thee the tent Where Holofernes would have thee in to him, Yea, for his slayer waiting, Waiting thee to entertain, Desiring thee, his death, to enjoy, as Jael Waited for Sisera her slain. _Judith_. Have done! Do you think I know not why your souls Are so delighted round me? Do you think I see not what it is you praise?--not me, But you yourselves triumphing in me and over me. _A Citizen_. Did we kill Holofernes? _Judith_. No: nor I. That corpse was not his death. He is alive, And will be till there is no more a world Filled with his hidden hunger, waiting for souls That ford the monstrous waters of the world. Alive in you is Holofernes now, But fed and rejoicing; I have filled your hunger. Yea, and alive in me: my spirit hath been Enjoyed by the lust of the world, and I am changed Vilely by the vile thing that clutcht on me, Like sulphurous smoke eating into silver. Your song is all of this, this your rejoicing; You have good right to circle me with song! You are the world, and you have fed on me. _A Citizen_. We are the world; yes, but the world for ever Honouring thee. _Judith_. How am I honoured so, If I no honour have for the world, but rather Hold it an odious and traitorous thing, That means no honour but to those whose spirits Have yielded to its ancient lechery?-- Defiled, defiled! _A Citizen_. Thou wert moved by our grief: Was that a vile thing? _Judith_. That was the cunning world. It moved me by your grief to give myself Into the pleasure of its ravenous love. _A Citizen_. Judith, if thy hot spirit beareth still Indignant suffering of villainy, Think, that thou hast no wrong from it. Such things Are in themselves dead, and have only life From what lives round them. And around thee glory Lives and will force its splendour on the harm Thy purity endured, making it shine Like diamond in sunlight, as before Unviolated it could not. _Judith_. Ay, to you I doubt not I seem admirable now, Worthy of being sung in loudest praise; But to myself how seem I? _A Citizen_. Surely as one Whose charity went down the stairs of hell, And barter'd with the fiends thy sacredest For our deliverance. _Judith_. And that you praise!-- I was a virgin spirit. Whence I come I know not, and I care not whither I go. One fearful knowledge holds me: that I am A spirit walking dangerously here. For the world covets me. I am alone, And made of something which the world has not, Unless its substance can devour my spirit. And it hath devoured me! In Holofernes It seized me, fed on me; and then gibed on me, With show of his death scoffing at my rage,-- His death!--He lay there, drunken, glutted with me, And his bare falchion hung beside the bed,-- Look on it, and look on the blood I made Go pouring thunder of pleasure through his brain!-- And like a mad thing hitting at the madness Thronging upon it in a grinning rout, I my defilement smote, that Holofernes. But does a maniac kill the frenzy in him, When with his fists he beats the clambering fiends That swarm against his limbs? No more did I Kill my defilement; it was fast within me; And like a frenzy can go out of me And dress its hideous motions in my world. For when I come back here, behold the thing I murdered in the camp leaps up and yells! The carrion Holofernes, my defilement, Dances a triumph round me, roars and rejoices, Quickened to hundreds of exulting lives. _A Citizen_. God help thee in this wildness! Are we then As Holofernes to thee? _Judith_. You are naught But the defilement that is in me now, Rejoicing to be lodged safely within me. You are the lust I entertained, rejoicing To wreak itself upon my purity. The stratagems of my ravishment you are, Rejoicing that the will you serve has dealt Its power on me. O, I hate you not. You and your crying grief should have blown past My heart like wind shaking a fasten'd casement. But I must have you in. Myself I loathe For opening to you, and thereby opening To the demon which had set you on to whine Pitiably in the porches of my spirit. You are but noise; but he is the lust of the world, The infinite wrong the spirit, the virgin spirit, Must fasten against, or be for ever vile. _A Citizen_. But is it naught that we, the folk of God, Are safe by thee? _Judith_. God hath his own devices. But I would be God's helper! I would be Known as the woman whom his strength had chosen To ruin the Assyrians!--O my God, How dreadfully thou punishest small sins! If it is thou who punishest; but rather It is that, when we slacken in perceiving The world's intent towards us, and fatally, Enticed out of suspicion by fair signs, Go from ignoring its proposals, down To parley,--thou our weakness dost permit. In all my days I from the greed of the world Virginal have kept my spirit's dwelling,-- Till now; yea, all my being I have maintained Sacredly my own possession; for love But made more beautiful and more divine My spirit's ownership. And yet no warning, When I infatuate went down to be Procuress of myself to the world's desire, Did God blaze on my blindness, no rebuke. Therefore I am no more my virgin own, But hatefully, unspeakably, the world's. To these now I belong; they took me and used me. I have no pride to live for; and why else Should one stay living, if not joyfully proud? For I have yielded now; mercilessly What is makes foolish nothing of what was. To know the world, for all its grasping hands, For all its heat to utter its pent nature Into the souls that must go faring through it, Availing nothing against purity, Made always like rebellion trodden under,-- By this was life a noble labour. Now I have been persuaded into the world's pleasure: And now at last I will all certainly Contrive for myself the death of Holofernes. [OZIAS _comes behind her and catches the lifted falchion_. _Judith_. It was well done, Ozias. _Ozias_. I have watcht Thy anguish growing, and I lookt for this. _Judith_. Thou knowest me better than I know myself. What moves in me is strange and uncontrolled, That once I thought was ruled: thou knew'st me better.-- Indeed thou must forgive me; what was I To take so bitterly thy suit? What right Had I to give thee anger, when thou wouldst Brighten thy hopeless death with me enjoyed, I, even from that anger, going to be Holofernes' pleasure?--Thou knewest me better, And therefore shalt forgive me. Ay, no doubt My spirit answered thee so fiercely then Because it felt thee reading me aright, How a mere bragging was my purity. But now to pardon askt, I must add thanks.-- I had forgot Manasses! Even love Was driven forth of me by these loud mouths! Whether in death he waits for me, I know not; But it had been an unforgivable thing To have made this the end; not to have gone To death as unto spousals, leaving life As one sets down a work faithfully done, And knows oneself by service justified, Worthy of love, whether love be or not. But, soiled with detestation, to have thrown Fiercely aside the garment of this light; Proved at the last impatient, death desiring Like a mere doffing of foul drenchèd clothes; Release from the wicked hindering mire of sorrow; A comfortable darkness hiding me Out of the glowing world myself have made An insult, domineering me with splendour;-- O such a death had turned, past all forgiving, My insult to Manasses, and searcht him out, Even where he is quiet, with the blaze, Ranging like din, of this contempt, this triumph. Not crying out such hateful news should I Flee hunted into death, unto my love. From this, Ozias, thou hast saved me. Now I am to learn my shame, that not amazed, But practised in my burden, I at last, When my time comes, may all in gladness fare The road made sacred by Manasses' feet. [JUDITH _goes into her house_. _Ozias (addressing the citizens)_. You do well to be stricken silent here. Terrible Holofernes slain by a woman Was something wonderful, to be noised aloud; But this is a wonder past applauding thought, This grief darkening Judith, in the midst Of the new shining glory she herself Has brought to conquer in our skies the storm. You do well to be dumb: for you have seen Virginity. That spirit you have seen, Seen made wrathfully plain that secret spirit, Whereby is man's frail scabbard filled with steel. This, cumbered in the earthen kind of man, Which ceaseless waters would be wearing down, Alone giveth him stubborn substance, holds him Upright and hard against impious fate. All things within it would the world possess, And have them in the tide of its desire: Man hath his nature of the vehement world; He is a torrent like the stars and beasts Flowing to answer the fierce world's desire. But like a giant wading in the sea Stands in the rapture, and refusing it, And looking upward out of it to find Who knows what sign?--spirit, virginity; A power caught by the power of the world; The spirit in whose unknown hope doth man Deny the mastery of his fortune here; Virginity, whose pride, impassion'd only To be as she herself would be, nor thence To loosen for the world's endeavouring, And, though all give the rash obedience, stand Her own possession,--this virginity, This pride of the spirit, asking no reward But to be pride unthrown, this is the force Whereby man hath his courage in the strange Fearful turmoil of being conscious man. Yea, worshipping this spirit, he will at last Grow into high divine imagination, Wherein the envious wildness of the world Yieldeth its striving up to him, and takes His mind, building the endless stars like stone To house his towering joy of self-possessing. This made you dumb; ignorant knowledge of this, Blind vision of virginity's mightiness, Did chide the exclamation in your hearts. And think not you have seen, in Judith's grief, Virginity drown'd in the pouring world. For what is done is naught; what is, is all: And Judith is virginity's appointed. Even by her injury she showeth us, As fire by violence may be revealed, How sovereign is virginity.-- But let us now consult what way her grief, Which is not to be understood by us, May spend itself, with naught to urge its power. Let us within our walls keep close this tale, Close as the famine and the thirst were kept Devouring us by the Assyrians. Let there be no news going through the land Out of Bethulia but this: that we At Judith's hands had our deliverance, But she from Holofernes and his crew Unwilling and astonisht reverence, As they were men with minds opprest by God. THE ETERNAL WEDDING _He_. Even as a wind that hasteth round the world From out cold hours fill'd with shadow of earth, To pour alight against the risen sun; So unto thee adoring, out of its shadow Floweth my spirit, into the light of thee Which Beauty is, and Joy. From my own fate, From out the darkness wherein long I fared Worshipping stars and morsels of the light, Through doors of golden morning now I pass Into the great whole light and perfect day Of shining Beauty, open to me at last. Yea, into thee now do I pass, beloved: Beauty and thou are mine! _She_. And I am thine! I am desirable to my desire: Thence am I clean as immortality With Beauty and Joy, the fiery power of Beauty. _He_. And by my spirit made marvellous here by thee, Poured out all clear into the gold of thee, Not myself only do I know; I have Golden within me the whole fate of man: That every flesh and soul belongs to one Continual joyward ravishment, whose end Is here, in this perfection. Now I know-- For all my speculation soareth up, A bird taking eternity for air,-- Now being mixt with thee, in the burning midst Of Beauty for my sense and mind and soul,-- That life hath highest gone which hath most joy. For like great wings forcefully smiting air And driving it along in rushing rivers, Desire of joy beats mightily pulsing forward The world's one nature, and all the loose lives therein, Carried and greatly streaming on a gale Of craving, swept fiercely along in beauty;-- Like a great weather of wind and shining sun, When the airs pick up whole huge waves of sea, Crumble them in their grasp and high aloft Sow them glittering, a white watery dust, To company with light: so we are driven Onward and upward in a wind of beauty, Until man's race be wielded by its joy Into some high incomparable day, Where perfectly delight may know itself,-- No longer need a strife to know itself, Only by its prevailing over pain. _She_. Beloved, but no pain may strive with us. _He_. No, for we are flown far ahead of life: The feet of our Spirit have wonderfully trod The dangers of the rushing fate of life, As summer-searching birds tread with their wings Mountainous surges in the air. But many, Not strongly fledge to ride the world's great rapture, Must break, down fallen into steep confusion, Where we climb easily and tower with joy. Nevertheless doth life foretell in us How it shall all make seizure at the last Upon this height of ecstasy, this fort Life like an army storms: Captains we are In the great assault; and where we stand alone Within these hours, built like establisht flames Round us, at long last all man's life shall stand At peace with joy, wearing delighted sense As meadows wear their golden pleasure of flowers. Certain my heart dwells in these builded hours, That there is no more beauty beyond thee. Thou art my utter beauty; and--behold The marvel, God in Heaven!--I am thine. Therefore we know, in this height-guarded place Whereto the speed of our desire hath brought us; Here in this safety crowning, like a fort Built upon topmost peaks, the height of beauty,-- We know to be glad of life as we were gods Timelessly glad of deity; yea, to enjoy Fleshly, spiritual Being till the swift Torrent of glee (as hurled star-dust can change Dim earthly weather to a moment like the sun,) Doth startle life to self-adoring godhead,-- Divine body of Power and divine Burning soul of Light and self-desire. And having given ourselves all to amazement, We are made like a prophesying song Of life all joy, a bride in the arms of God.-- Yea, God shall marry his people at the last; And every man and woman who has sworn That only joy can make this Being sacred, Weaves at the wedding-garment. _She_. Ah, my beloved, Feelest thou too that out of earth and time We are transgressing into Heavenly hours? Or, threading the dark worldly multitude And making lightning of its path, there comes A zeal from God posting along our lives. _He_. For some eternal pulse hath chosen us, Some divine anger beats within our hearts. _She_. Anger? But how far off is love from anger! _He_. Nay, both belong to joy; joy's kind is twain. And close as in the pouring of sun-flame Are mingled glory of light and fury of heat, Joy utters its twin radiance, love and anger; If joy be not indeed all sacred wrath With circumstance; indignant memory Of what hath been, when the new lusts of God Exulted unimaginably, before Rigours of law fastened like creeping habit Upon their measureless wont, and forced them drive Their ranging music of delighted being Through the fixt beating tune of a circling world.-- Is not love so? Amazement of an anger Against created shape and narrowness? The bound rage of the uncreated Spirit Whose striving doth impassion us and the world? A wrath that thou and I are not one being? _She_. Yes, and not only words that thou and I Out of our sexes with a flame's escape Are fashioned into one. The Spirit in us Hath, like imagination in a prison, Kindled itself free of all boundary, So that it hath no room but its own joy, Ample as at the first, before it fell Into this burthenous habit of a world. What have we now to do with the world? We are Made one unworldly thing; we are past the world; Yea, and unmade: we are immortality. _He_. And only fools abominably crazed, Those who will set imagination down As less in truth than their dim sensual wit, Dare doubt that, while these dreams of ours, these bodies, Still quiver in the world each with its own Delight, the great divine wrath of our love Hath stricken off from us the place of the world! Yea, as we walk in spiritual freedom Upright before the shining face of God, Behold, as it were the shadow of our stature Thrown by that light, we draw the world behind us,-- That world wherein, darkly I remember, We thought we were as twain. _She_. Yet, since God means That love should sunder our fixt separateness And make our married spirits leap together, As lightning out of the clouds of sexual flesh, Into one sexless undivided joy; Why hath he made us a divided flesh? We being single ecstasy, now as strange As if a shadow stained where no one stood The ground in the noon-glare, seemeth to me The long blind time wherein our lives and the world Lay stretcht out dark upon the light of heaven, Like shadow of some bulk that took the glory; While yet there stood not over it, to shade The splendour from it, our heaven-fronting love, This great new soul that our two souls have kindled. Yea, and how like, that in the world's chance-medley This our exulting destiny had been slain, Though here it lords the world as a man his shadow! _He_. But the world is not chance, except to those Most feeble in desire: who needeth aught Shall have it, if he fill his soul with the need. While still our ignorant lives were drowned beneath The flooding of the earthly fate, and chance Seemed pouring mightily dark and loud between us, Unspeakable news oft visited our hearts: We knew each other by desire; yea, spake Out of the strength of darkness flowing o'er us, Across the hindering outcry of the world One to another sweet desirable things. Until at last we took such heavenly lust Of those unheard messages into our lives, We were made abler than the worldly fate. We held its random enmity as frost The storming Northern seas, and fastened it In likeness of our love's imagining; Or as a captain with his courage holds The mutinous blood of an army aghast with fear, And maketh it unwillingly dare his purpose, Our lust of love struck its commandment deep Into the froward turbulence of world That parted us. Suddenly the dark noise Cleft and went backward from us, and we stood Knowing each other in a quiet light; And like wise music made of many strings Following and adoring underneath Prevailing song, fate lived beneath our love, Under the masterful excellent silence of it, A multitudinous obedience. _She_. Yea, but not this my marvel: not that we Should master with desire the sundering world, We who bore in our hearts such destiny, There was no force knew to be dangerous Against it, but must turn its malice clean Into obsequious favour worshipping us. Rather hath this astonisht me, that we Have not for ever lived in this high hour. Only to be twin elements of joy In this extravagance of Being, Love, Were our divided natures shaped in twain; And to this hour the whole world must consent. Is it not very marvellous, our lives Can only come to this out of a long Strange sundering, with the years of the world between us? _He_. Shall life do more than God? for hath not God Striven with himself, when into known delight His unaccomplisht joy he would put forth,-- This mystery of a world sign of his striving? Else wherefore this, a thing to break the mind With labouring in the wonder of it, that here Being--the world and we--is suffered to be!-- But, lying on thy breast one notable day, Sudden exceeding agony of love Made my mind a trance of infinite knowledge. I was not: yet I saw the will of God As light unfashion'd, unendurable flame, Interminable, not to be supposed; And there was no more creature except light,-- The dreadful burning of the lonely God's Unutter'd joy. And then, past telling, came Shuddering and division in the light: Therein, like trembling, was desire to know Its own perfect beauty; and it became A cloven fire, a double flaming, each Adorable to each; against itself Waging a burning love, which was the world;-- A moment satisfied in that love-strife I knew the world!--And when I fell from there, Then knew I also what this life would do In being twain,--in being man and woman! For it would do even as its endless Master, Making the world, had done; yea, with itself Would strive, and for the strife would into sex Be cloven, double burning, made thereby Desirable to itself. Contrivèd joy Is sex in life; and by no other thing Than by a perfect sundering, could life Change the dark stream of unappointed joy To perfect praise of itself, the glee that loves And worships its own Being. This is ours! Yet only for that we have been so long Sundered desire: thence is our life all praise.-- But we, well knowing by our strength of joy There is no sundering more, how far we love From those sad lives that know a half-love only, Alone thereby knowing themselves for ever Sealed in division of love, and therefore made To pour their strength out always into their love's Fierceness, as green wood bleeds its hissing sap Into red heat of a fire! Not so do we: The cloven anger, life, hath left to wage Its flame against itself, here turned to one Self-adoration.--Ah, what comes of this? The joy falters a moment, with closed wings Wearying in its upward journey, ere Again it goes on high, bearing its song, Its delight breathing and its vigour beating The highest height of the air above the world. _She_. What hast thou done to me!--I would have soul, Before I knew thee, Love, a captive held By flesh. Now, inly delighted with desire, My body knows itself to be nought else But thy heart's worship of me; and my soul Therein is sunlight held by warm gold air. Nay, all my body is become a song Upon the breath of spirit, a love-song. _He_. And mine is all like one rapt faculty, As it were listening to the love in thee, My whole mortality trembling to take Thy body like heard singing of thy spirit. _She_. Surely by this, Beloved, we must know Our love is perfect here,--that not as holds The common dullard thought, we are things lost In an amazement that is all unware; But wonderfully knowing what we are! Lo, now that body is the song whereof Spirit is mood, knoweth not our delight? Knoweth not beautifully now our love, That Life, here to this festival bid come Clad in his splendour of worldly day and night, Filled and empower'd by heavenly lust, is all The glad imagination of the Spirit? _He_. Were it not so, Love could not be at all: Nought could be, but a yearning to fulfil Desire of beauty, by vain reaching forth Of sense to hold and understand the vision Made by impassion'd body,--vision of thee! But music mixt with music are, in love, Bodily senses; and as flame hath light, Spirit this nature hath imagined round it, No way concealed therein, when love comes near, Nor in the perfect wedding of desires Suffering any hindrance. _She_. Ah, but now, Now am I given love's eternal secret! Yea, thou and I who speak, are but the joy Of our for ever mated spirits; but now The wisdom of my gladness even through Spirit Looks, divinely elate. Who hath for joy Our Spirits? Who hath imagined them Round him in fashion'd radiance of desire, As into light of these exulting bodies Flaming Spirit is uttered? _He_. Yea, here the end Of love's astonishment! Now know we Spirit, And Who, for ease of joy, contriveth Spirit. Now all life's loveliness and power we have Dissolved in this one moment, and our burning Carries all shining upward, till in us Life is not life, but the desire of God, Himself desiring and himself accepting. Now what was prophecy in us is made Fulfilment: we are the hour and we are the joy, We in our marvellousness of single knowledge, Of Spirit breaking down the room of fate And drawing into his light the greeting fire Of God,--God known in ecstasy of love Wedding himself to utterance of himself. MARRIAGE SONG I Come up, dear chosen morning, come, Blessing the air with light, And bid the sky repent of being dark: Let all the spaces round the world be white, And give the earth her green again. Into new hours of beautiful delight, Out of the shadow where she has lain, Bring the earth awake for glee, Shining with dews as fresh and clear As my beloved's voice upon the air. For now, O morning chosen of all days, on thee A wondrous duty lies: There was an evening that did loveliness foretell; Thence upon thee, O chosen morn, it fell To fashion into perfect destiny The radiant prophecy. For in an evening of young moon, that went Filling the moist air with a rosy fire, I and my beloved knew our love; And knew that thou, O morning, wouldst arise To give us knowledge of achieved desire. For, standing stricken with astonishment, Half terrified in the delight, Even as the moon did into clear air move And made a golden light, Lo there, croucht up against it, a dark hill, A monstrous back of earth, a spine Of hunchèd rock, furred with great growth of pine, Lay like a beast, snout in its paws, asleep; Yet in its sleeping seemed it miserable, As though strong fear must always keep Hold of its heart, and drive its blood in dream. Yea, for to our new love, did it not seem, That dark and quiet length of hill, The sleeping grief of the world?--Out of it we Had like imaginations stept to be Beauty and golden wonder; and for the lovely fear Of coming perfect joy, had changed The terror that dreamt there! And now the golden moon had turned To shining white, white as our souls that burned With vision of our prophecy assured: Suddenly white was the moon; but she At once did on a woven modesty Of cloud, and soon went in obscured: And we were dark, and vanisht that strange hill. But yet it was not long before There opened in the sky a narrow door, Made with pearl lintel and pearl sill; And the earth's night seem'd pressing there,-- All as a beggar on some festival would peer,-- To gaze into a room of light beyond, The hidden silver splendour of the moon. Yea, and we also, we Long gazed wistfully Towards thee, O morning, come at last, And towards the light that thou wilt pour upon us soon! II O soul who still art strange to sense, Who often against beauty wouldst complain, Doubting between joy and pain: If like the startling touch of something keen Against thee, it hath been To follow from an upland height The swift sun hunting rain Across the April meadows of a plain, Until the fields would flash into the air Their joyous green, like emeralds alight; Or when in the blue of night's mid-noon The burning naked moon Draws to a brink of cloudy weather near, A breadth of snow, firm and soft as a wing, Stretcht out over a wind that gently goes,-- Through the white sleep of snowy cloud there grows An azure-border'd shining ring, The gleaming dream of the approaching joy of her;-- What now wilt thou do, Soul? What now, If with such things as these troubled thou wert? How wilt thou now endure, or how Not now be strangely hurt?-- When utter beauty must come closer to thee Than even anger or fear could be; When thou, like metal in a kiln, must lie Seized by beauty's mightily able flame; Enjoyed by beauty as by the ruthless glee Of an unescapable power; Obeying beauty as air obeys a cry; Yea, one thing made of beauty and thee, As steel and a white heat are made the same! --Ah, but I know how this infirmity Will fail and be not, no, not memory, When I begin the marvellous hour. This only is my heart's strain'd eagerness, Long waiting for its bliss.-- But from those other fears, from those That keep to Love so close, From fears that are the shadow of delight, Hide me, O joys; make them unknown to-night! III Thou bright God that in dream earnest to me last night, Thou with the flesh made of a golden light, Knew I not thee, thee and thy heart, Knew I not well, God, who thou wert? Yea, and my soul divinely understood The light that was beneath thee a ground, The golden light that cover'd thee round, Turning my sleep to a fiery morn, Was as a heavenly oath there sworn Promising me an immortal good: Well I knew thee, God of Marriages, thee and thy flame! Ah, but wherefore beside thee came That fearful sight of another mood? Why in thy light, to thy hand chained, Towards me its bondage terribly strained, Why came with thee that dreadful hound, The wild hound Fear, black, ravenous and gaunt? Why him with thee should thy dear light surround? Why broughtest thou that beast to haunt The blissful footsteps of my golden dream?-- All shadowy black the body dread, All frenzied fire the head,-- The hunger of its mouth a hollow crimson flame, The hatred in its eyes a blaze Fierce and green, stabbing the ruddy glaze, And sharp white jetting fire the teeth snarl'd at me, And white the dribbling rage of froth,-- A throat that gaped to bay and paws working violently, Yet soundless all as a winging moth; Tugging towards me, famishing for my heart;-- Even while thou, O golden god, wert still Looking the beautiful kindness of thy will Into my soul, even then must I be, With thy bright promise looking at me, Then bitterly of that hound afraid?-- Darkness, I know, attendeth bright, And light comes not but shadow comes: And heart must know, if it know thy light, Thy wild hound Fear, the shadow of love's delight. Yea, is it thus? Are we so made Of death and darkness, that even thou, O golden God of the joys of love, Thy mind to us canst only prove, The glorious devices of thy mind, By so revealing how thy journeying here Through this mortality, doth closely bind Thy brightness to the shadow of dreadful Fear?-- Ah no, it shall not be! Thy joyous light Shall hide me from the hunger of fear to-night. IV For wonderfully to live I now begin: So that the darkness which accompanies Our being here, is fasten'd up within The power of light that holdeth me; And from these shining chains, to see My joy with bold misliking eyes, The shrouded figure will not dare arise. For henceforth, from to-night, I am wholly gone into the bright Safety of the beauty of love: Not only all my waking vigours plied Under the searching glory of love, But knowing myself with love all satisfied Even when my life is hidden in sleep; As high clouds, to themselves that keep The moon's white company, are all possest Silverly with the presence of their guest; Or as a darken'd room That hath within it roses, whence the air And quietness are taken everywhere Deliciously by sweet perfume. EPILOGUE EPILOGUE What shall we do for Love these days? How shall we make an altar-blaze To smite the horny eyes of men With the renown of our Heaven, And to the unbelievers prove Our service to our dear god, Love? What torches shall we lift above The crowd that pushes through the mire, To amaze the dark heads with strange fire? I should think I were much to blame, If never I held some fragrant flame Above the noises of the world, And openly 'mid men's hurrying stares, Worshipt before the sacred fears That are like flashing curtains furl'd Across the presence of our lord Love. Nay, would that I could fill the gaze Of the whole earth with some great praise Made in a marvel for men's eyes, Some tower of glittering masonries, Therein such a spirit flourishing Men should see what my heart can sing: All that Love hath done to me Built into stone, a visible glee; Marble carried to gleaming height As moved aloft by inward delight; Not as with toil of chisels hewn, But seeming poised in a mighty tune. For of all those who have been known To lodge with our kind host, the sun, I envy one for just one thing: In Cordova of the Moors There dwelt a passion-minded King, Who set great bands of marble-hewers To fashion his heart's thanksgiving In a tall palace, shapen so All the wondering world might know The joy he had of his Moorish lass. His love, that brighter and larger was Than the starry places, into firm stone He sent, as if the stone were glass Fired and into beauty blown. Solemn and invented gravely In its bulk the fabric stood, Even as Love, that trusteth bravely In its own exceeding good To be better than the waste Of time's devices; grandly spaced, Seriously the fabric stood. But over it all a pleasure went Of carven delicate ornament, Wreathing up like ravishment, Mentioning in sculptures twined The blitheness Love hath in his mind; And like delighted senses were The windows, and the columns there Made the following sight to ache As the heart that did them make. Well I can see that shining song Flowering there, the upward throng Of porches, pillars and windowed walls, Spires like piercing panpipe calls, Up to the roof's snow-cloud flight; All glancing in the Spanish light White as water of arctic tides, Save an amber dazzle on sunny sides. You had said, the radiant sheen Of that palace might have been A young god's fantasy, ere he came His serious worlds and suns to frame; Such an immortal passion Quiver'd among the slim hewn stone. And in the nights it seemed a jar Cut in the substance of a star, Wherein a wine, that will be poured Some time for feasting Heaven, was stored. But within this fretted shell, The wonder of Love made visible, The King a private gentle mood There placed, of pleasant quietude. For right amidst there was a court, Where always muskèd silences Listened to water and to trees; And herbage of all fragrant sort,-- Lavender, lad's-love, rosemary, Basil, tansy, centaury,-- Was the grass of that orchard, hid Love's amazements all amid. Jarring the air with rumour cool, Small fountains played into a pool With sound as soft as the barley's hiss When its beard just sprouting is; Whence a young stream, that trod on moss, Prettily rimpled the court across. And in the pool's clear idleness, Moving like dreams through happiness, Shoals of small bright fishes were; In and out weed-thickets bent Perch and carp, and sauntering went With mounching jaws and eyes a-stare; Or on a lotus leaf would crawl, A brinded loach to bask and sprawl, Tasting the warm sun ere it dipt Into the water; but quick as fear Back his shining brown head slipt To crouch on the gravel of his lair, Where the cooled sunbeams broke in wrack, Spilt shatter'd gold about his back. So within that green-veiled air, Within that white-walled quiet, where Innocent water thought aloud,-- Childish prattle that must make The wise sunlight with laughter shake On the leafage overbowed,-- Often the King and his love-lass Let the delicious hours pass. All the outer world could see Graved and sawn amazingly Their love's delighted riotise, Fixt in marble for all men's eyes; But only these twain could abide In the cool peace that withinside Thrilling desire and passion dwelt; They only knew the still meaning spelt By Love's flaming script, which is God's word written in ecstasies. And where is now that palace gone, All the magical skill'd stone, All the dreaming towers wrought By Love as if no more than thought The unresisting marble was? How could such a wonder pass? Ah, it was but built in vain Against the stupid horns of Rome, That pusht down into the common loam The loveliness that shone in Spain. But we have raised it up again! A loftier palace, fairer far, Is ours, and one that fears no war. Safe in marvellous walls we are; Wondering sense like builded fires, High amazement of desires, Delight and certainty of love, Closing around, roofing above Our unapproacht and perfect hour Within the splendours of love's power. _The "Hymn to Love" is reprinted by permission from "The Vineyard."_ End of Project Gutenberg's Emblems Of Love, by Lascelles Abercrombie *** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EMBLEMS OF LOVE *** ***** This file should be named 15472-8.txt or 15472-8.zip ***** This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: https://www.gutenberg.org/1/5/4/7/15472/ Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, S.R. Ellison and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team. Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will be renamed. 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